Iman’s First Fragrance Is a Tribute to Her Marriage to David Bowie

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Iman, the Somalia-born supermodel and cosmetics brand founder, is finally creating her own fragrance. Called Love Memoir, it launches exclusively with HSN this week.

“I’ve been in the beauty business since the ‘90s but I’ve never created a fragrance,” Iman tells The Hollywood Reporter during a phone call from her house in upstate New York, “and it’s completely a tribute to the memories and special moments I had with my husband.”

She’s referring of course to music legend David Bowie, who she was married to for nearly a quarter of a century before he died in 2016. The two shared a life together, both in New York City and in their country house. When he passed away from liver cancer five years ago, Iman, amid her grief, didn’t spend time at their second home for years. “Because when I would come here, it always reminds me of those memories and grief hits me and then I’ll run and escape to the city,” she says.

But the lockdowns necessitated by the COVID-19 pandemic changed things. The model and beauty entrepreneur had gone up to the upstate New York house in early 2020 — “I thought I’d be here for a long weekend and then go back to the city. And then, of course, I was here at home for the whole year on my own with my little dog,” she says.

Being in the countryside, she says, helped her process her feelings of loss. “Being stuck in this beautiful landscape — we have mountains in front of us — was just transformative, I have to tell you.” The mountains that she sees from the property remind her of Italy, where she got married to Bowie in 1992. “It reminds me of Umbria and the sunsets there. This landscape actually healed me. I was able to come through the other side and now I remember our memories joyfully. It’s like 24 years of memories and of living with somebody you were completely infatuated with and in love with.”

Her time spent with nature also sparked new creative impulses. She found herself stacking small stones on her property, creating cairns. “I did it to calm me down and I had no idea why I kept stacking small stones and larger stones. You have to find the stones that go together. When you put them on top of each other, you have to find the right balance. I kept on doing that and I went online and found out that the history of stacking stones existed for centuries and across cultures. Originally, the idea was to memorialize somebody who passed away. And then when people started traveling in unknown terrains, people would leave stacking stones for the people behind them to know they aren’t lost.”

The perfume bottle for Love Memoir was inspired by those pursuits. “The design is a stacking stone and the amber part of the bottle is the color of the sunset. And the gold part — that’s the hammered gold in African jewelry,” she says.

Creating the actual scent of Love Memoir was a bigger challenge. “Fragrances are difficult for me,” says Iman, who after her husband died, had been wearing Bowie’s favorite fragrance, Tom Ford Grey Vetiver (along with a necklace made for her by Celine designer Hedi Slimane that says “David” on it). “That’s just what I felt close to.” Vetiver became one of the base notes of Love Memoir, along with vanilla and patchouli. There are middle notes of rose, jasmine and orris root and top notes of bergamot, black currant and coconut. “The ingredients were inspired by global travels,” she says, adding that in putting vetiver together with some of her own favorite scents, “I found the balance of the two of us. To me, it’s a fragrance that has a feminine side and has a masculine woodsy side and that’s what I love.”

Asked if she considers the fragrance unisex, Iman says, “For me, fragrance is whatever you like. I know boys who like gardenias. I think of fragrance like pants — or today, a dress — anybody can wear them. If Harry Styles can look the way he looks — I want to go to his concert just to see what he’s wearing. I love how fearless he is and it’s not being pretty. He’s playful with it.”

Of course, it was her husband Bowie who broke down gender barriers in music way before Styles did. And ultimately, Love Memoir she sees as a tribute to Bowie. “Fragrance is something that you put on your skin. I can’t see anything more intimate than that,” says Iman, who vividly recalls how the two met.

“It was a blind date. We were set up, but on top of that, we were introduced by a hairdresser. I always say, I trust a hairdresser with shampoo and conditioner but not with a husband. I had retired from modeling in 1989 and moved to California,” she says. There, she met the photographer Greg Gorman who in turn introduced her to hairdresser Teddy Antolin (who passed away in 2016).

“He was David’s hairdresser. He thought we would make a perfect match and he told me one day he’s having a birthday party at a restaurant. He invited me to come and so I went and actually there was no party. There were four people. It was him and his boyfriend and David and I and it was a complete set-up. David didn’t know and I didn’t know. David said it was love at first sight, but it took me a minute, just a minute, and we were together since then.”

Iman also spoke with THR about what it was like to work in fashion in the ‘70s and ‘80s as a woman of color and how her experiences sparked the creation of her own cosmetics line. Keep reading below, and shop Love Memoir on HSN.

How was Iman Cosmetics born?

What was the seed of Iman Cosmetics was planted in my head on my first job. When I arrived here in 1974, three days after I arrived, I was working for American Vogue and on the job, there was a makeup artist and a Caucasian model. And after he finished her makeup, he approached me and said to me a very perplexing question. He said, ‘Did you bring your own foundation?’ And I had no idea what he was talking about. I just arrived three days before from Africa. I had never worn makeup in my life or heels for that matter — or seen fashion magazines.

And then he proceeded to mix and match and put some makeup on my face and when I looked at myself in the mirror, I looked grey. Literally grey. And I had no idea what was going on. And really the beauty gods worked magic that day for me because the pictures were in black and white, which hides multitudes of sins when it comes to skin color and bad cosmetics. And what I learned that day in my ignorance of beauty was to go to the store and find every foundation that I could find, that had a little bit of a shade close to my skin and mix and match a batch and put it on my face. And I was armed with a Polaroid camera, the first seflies. And I would take a picture of myself to see how the batch I created would look.

What did you take away from that experience?

I knew at the end of the day that my image is my currency and if I don’t look good, they aren’t going to say the makeup artist doesn’t know what he’s doing or the photographer doesn’t know how to light a Black model, they will say the girl doesn’t look good and I’ll be out the door.

The absence of Black models in the magazines says a lot to a young girl who is growing up and who is looking for images of herself — the representation that she’s also beautiful and that not all of us have to look a certain way.

What helped you breakthrough?

We always had to fight for everything. Everything in business was a struggle. [White photographers, editors and stylists] fought for me to be on jobs. Allyship is very important.

Would you ever consider returning to the modeling world?

Dear god no. I said goodbye in 1989. Not only have I not done fashion shows, I have not been to a fashion show. Somebody asked me the other day, what is the secret of my success — it’s knowing when to leave the party. That’s the secret of my success.