Bowie Style

Clowning about at the Alacazar Club in Paris with Coco
Schwab, May 1976.
The object of Bowie’s invective was Hermione
Farthingale: tall, beautiful, artistic and a classic
English rose of middle class stock (and with a name
to die for). The pair met late in 1967 while both
attended Lindsay Kemp’s mime and dance classes.
They appeared briefly together for a scene in a
BBC-TV drama, The Pistol Shot, and by spring
1968 had fallen in love. In August, Bowie moved out
of Ken Pitt’s central London flat to share an attic
bedsit with Hermione in Kensington.
Bowie wrote ‘Even A Fool Learns To Love’ when he was
with Hermione Farthingale. Ken Pitt: “She was very much a
muse. A delightful girl, and the complete antithesis of Angie, but
I don’t think they were at all matched. I was later told that she
left after another man reappeared in her life.”
Temporarily ditching plans for a solo career, he
formed Feathers, a folksy, mixed-media trio with
Hermione, who danced, sang occasionally and
provided a fine foil for Bowie and the guitar-playing