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Manila Bulletin devider Drive devider Youthquake

Youthquake

Published Sep 19, 2022 05:00 pm

No one is young forever, except maybe Penelope Tree1966.

PENELOPE IN PIGTAILS A portrait of youth by Cecile Beaton for Vogue

That was when it began, this mindless obsession with something as fleeting and temporary as youth. If you are young now and you think the world is your stage and you care not what your elders have to say, good for you, may you be young forever.

But in 1966, Penelope Tree had beat you to it.

She is not young now but she owns that stage forever—she and The Beatles alone, whose John Lennon called her “Hot, Hot, Hot, Smart, Smart, Smart,” made that decade truly, aptly the Swingin’ Sixties.

But it began in the night of Nov. 28, 1966, at Truman Capote’s famous/infamous Black and White Ball at The Plaza Hotel in New York City, in a ballroom drowning in 450 bottles of Taittinger champagne and crammed with the likes of Babe Paley, CZ Guest, Gloria Guinness, Marella Agnelli, Slim Keith, and Lee Radziwill, all women of age, ripened by time, the Swans of New York. Also there were Mia Farrow in the arms of Frank Sinatra, the Italian Princess Luciana Pignatelli, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, the Maharani of Jaipur, Tallulah Bankhead, Henry Fonda, and Katherine Graham, the guest of honor.

Penelope Tree, then only 16, waltzed in with Ashton Hawkins, a pioneer in the field of art law, wearing a barely-there black V-neck tunic by a designer then unknown, Betsey Johnson, and the youthquake began.
No less than Cecile Beaton and Richard Avedon took notice and,  conspiring with Diana Vreeland, who feigned “attendance” because she was mourning the recent death of her husband (though she did go to the Paley pre-party dinner and pretended to proceed to the ball afterward), set out to turn Penelope Tree into a supermodel.

COMING OUT Penelope Tree at 16 turns heads at Truman Capote's legendary Black and White Ball at the Plaza Hotel in New York in 1966

Scars from adolescent acne ended her career by the time she turned 20, but it’s now in the history books, if you care to read.

Penelope Tree owned that stage but that stage, like the stage you are on now, basking in the spotlight of fresh skin, full hair, wide eyes, and future-forward optimism, it’s all a temporary. It never really lasts.

Don’t dwell too long.

Never overstay.

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