Model Iman and her husband David Bowie attend the 2005 CFDA Awards in New York City. Picture Evan Agostini/Getty Images.
IN AN era where celebrity marriages often begin with a six-figure tabloid tell-all and end after 72 days, David Bowie’s 23-year-old marriage to legendary supermodel Iman is something of a rarity.
Bowie, who died at the age of 69 after a private 18-month battle with cancer, is widely quoted as saying: “You would think that a rock star being married to a supermodel would be one of the greatest things in the world. It is.”
Somali-born Iman Mohamed Abdulmajid, 60, posted a series of poignant messages on social media in the lead up to Bowie’s death. “The struggle is real, but so is God,” she wrote on her public Twitter and Facebook accounts on Sunday.
Iman, left, and her husband, singer David Bowie arrive at the 2002 Council of Fashion Designers of America Fashion Awards in New York City. Picture: Suzanne Plunkett/AP Photo.Source:AP
The post has received more than 13,500 likes from fans offering condolences to the model and the couple’s teenager daughter Alexandria.
“Sometimes you will never know the true value of a moment until it becomes a memory,” read an image she posted on Saturday.
She reposted a series of old photographs of Bowie and a string of loving messages to mark his 69th birthday on Friday.
“I will love you til I die, I will see you in the sky #tonight happy birthday Mr Bowie,” read one next to a photograph of her husband with Tina Turner.
“Happy Birthday to the man who fell to earth. Forever Bowie,” read another. “Life isn’t about avoiding the bruises. It’s about collecting the scars to prove we showed up for it,” she wrote to her 108,000 Twitter followers Friday.
Iman, who is usually referred to using just her first name, is also stepmother to Bowie’s son Duncan from his previous marriage to Angie Bowie.
Iman has not commented publicly since her husband’s death was announced.
David Bowie and Iman, pictured in South Africa in 1995.Source:News Corp Australia
The couple, who enjoyed one of the most enduring marriages in the celebrity world, wed in 1992 and divided their time between London and New York. Their daughter was born in 2000.
“My marriage is exactly as fabulous as you all would think,” Iman said on The Nate Berkus Show in 2010. “He’s fun, he’s a really very curious man, and so I really learn a lot from him.”
While it was love at first sight for Bowie, who said he “was naming the children the first night we met”, it took a little longer for Iman to fully commit.
“For him [it was overwhelming],” said Iman. “I was not ready for a relationship. Definitely, I didn’t want to get into a relationship with somebody like him.
“But as I always said: I fell in love with David Jones. I did not fall in love with David Bowie. Bowie is just a persona. He’s a singer, an entertainer. David Jones is a man I met.”
Iman and David Bowie at the 2006 Glamour Women of the Year Awards at Carnegie Hall in New York.Source:AFP
Iman, whose beauty was once described by a magazine editor as a “white woman dipped in chocolate,” became a muse for many high end designers including Halston, Gianni Versace and Calvin Klein and Yves Saint-Laurent, who described her as his “dream woman”.
She started out modelling while there were still different rate cards for black models and white models.
“I didn’t even understand it. People called me ‘Iman the black model’. In my country we’re all black so nobody called somebody else black. It was foreign to my ears,” she told she toldThe Guardian in 2014.
“I was doing the same job as them. Why would I get less money? It didn’t even occur to me that it had anything to do with racism. I learned that quite fast.
“I wasn’t a major in political science for nothing, so I understood the politics of beauty and the politics of race when it comes to the fashion industry.”
Iman and her husband David Bowie at the 2005 CFDA Awards. Picture: Evan Agostini.Source:AFP
Iman is known for her extensive charity work and fighting for equality in the fashion industry. She launched her multi-million dollar cosmetics brand, Iman Cosmetics, in 1994, focusing on finding shades for darker skinned women.
She spent two years at the host of Project Runway Canada and in 2010 was awarded a Fashion Icon lifetime achievement award from the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA).
She and Bowie tried for seven years to fall pregnant. It finally happened when she was 44.
“I was at a shoot and Christie Brinkley walked in and she had a baby. So I said, ‘in Africa, if you carry another woman’s baby for a day, you’ll get pregnant.’ And she said, ‘Here!’ So I carried the baby all day,” she told Harper’s Bazaar in September last year.
“I do say it took two blondes to get me pregnant — Christie and David! I was 44 years old — you hear about the miracle of birth, but no it’s the miracle of conception. That’s a miracle.”
The couple were always very strict about their privacy and kept their relationship out of the tabloids.
“I’ve never had members of the press in my apartment. At home, it’s home. You retain the difference between a person and a persona. And people say, ‘Oh, you can’t have a private life.’ If you want it, you can.”
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