The iconic musician died in 2016 after a battle with liver cancer.
Iman is opening up about the death of her husband, David Bowie.
The 63-year-old supermodel tells Porter Edit how she’s still reeling from the music icon's 2016 death following a battle with liver cancer.
“People take pictures of me in the street, and say [touching my arm]: ‘I am so sorry for your loss,’” she says. “I’m like, don’t touch me. You just took pictures of me, how can you be sorry?”
“I get the fans’ grief, but it’s not the same,” she adds. “They have lost someone they look up to; we have lost a husband and a father.”
She continues, telling the magazine that she doesn’t always “want people to know how sad I am.”
“People say to me, ‘Oh, you’re so strong,’” she says. “I’m not strong – I am just trying to keep it together.”
Nearly two years after Bowie's death, Iman has no plans to enter a relationship any time soon; as for marriage, that’s completely off the table altogether.
“I will never remarry,” she says. “I mentioned my husband the other day with someone, and they said to me: ‘You mean your late husband?’ I said, no, he is always going to be my husband.”
“I do feel very lonely. But do I want a relationship? I can’t say never, but no, not now,” she reveals.
The couple had a daughter together, 18-year-old Alexandria, someone Iman works incredibly hard to protect from the spotlight. Both Iman and Bowie are also the parents of children from their first marriages as well -- Zulekha, 40, and Duncan, 47, respectively.
“She says I am overprotective,” Iman says of her daughter with Bowie, whom she calls Lexi. “But I told her, this can all wait, it isn’t going anywhere. Have a life that is private while you can, because one day soon it is going to be public, so enjoy this.”
The fascination the public has with Lexi was immediately clear on her birthday back in August, when Iman shared 18 photos to celebrate the milestone occasion.
“Every agency, every designer, called me to say: ‘If she wants to, we’d love for her to model for us,’” Iman recalls. “I said: ‘No, she doesn’t.’ I know why they wanted her to model – it’s because she is David Bowie’s daughter.”
In addition to discussing her family, Iman also speaks to her work to make the modeling world more diverse, something she’s already seeing great results from after sending an open letter to the industry in 2013 with the help of Bethann Hardison and Naomi Campbell.
“It is remarkable,” she says. “We are getting visible results. Not only on the runway, but where the spoils of war are: advertising. If you pick up the magazines and look at the ads, the change is visible.”
Back in March, Iman spoke about the lengths she is willing to go to in order to see more diversity in the modeling world.
“If a designer boycotts me, I should boycott him,” she told Harper’s Bazaar at the time. “I’m not going to buy a bag from someone who doesn’t use black models. We should celebrate and highlight the people who actually step it up.”
Watch the video below for more on Bowie and Iman:
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