Bowie: A Biography - JFK247

in 1969. They lived modestly in exile in Saudi Arabia
and Kenya, where Iman studied political science,
reading about both the Kennedys and the Black
Panthers, gazing admiringly at the visiting Peace
Corps officers and fantasizing about America. In
Kenya, she was discovered by famous fashion
photographer Peter Beard, who spotted her in her
casual wear (not herding cattle in the middle of the
jungle as was later reported) and requested to take
her picture. Iman only agreed to pose for Beard if
he’d pay for her fall tuition at the university. He
agreed. Like Bowie, she was instinctively adept at
the spin of media manipulation, and when Beard
returned to the States and spread the word about his
“native” discovery who spoke no English, she played
along for a time. Signed to the Wilhelmina modeling
agency, her in-your-face ethnicity was embraced by
designers and challenged audiences and critics in
Europe and America to hold her back.
Both a party girl and careerist, by the late eighties,
Iman was divorced from Seattle Supersonics
basketball legend Spencer Haywood. She had a fully
grown daughter, Zulekha; a personal fortune from
modeling; a thriving cosmetics line geared toward
black women; and a series of models, from Naomi
Campbell to Veronica Webb and Tyra Banks, who
held her up as a trailblazer and barrier smasher
within their industry. Although ten years Bowie’s
junior, Iman had few wild oats left to sow when they
were first fixed up in October of 1990. They’d met
over the years, but it seemed like both were finally