I was lucky in one respect: Marvin Israel, the second successor to Brodovich, was not only a sensitive art director, but also a remarkable artist in his own right, who appreciated my work and in time became a personal friend. He was a small, not very healthy person, who dressed like a bum and furnished his studio with rejected objects he found in the streets. He made it a point to appear unfriendly, imitated in this by his ugly little dog, also called Marvin, about whom he would warn visitors "be careful, Marvin bites". In fact, both master and dog were as gentle and warm-hearted as can be.

Marvin wanted me to do for BAZAAR the same kind of "natural" fashion photos I had done for ELLE. But Nancy White, the editor, wanted the models to wear extravagant hats and plenty of lipstick ("otherwise Revlon may cancel their ads" ). On one occasion, Marvin and I almost had it our way. We persuaded Nancy to organize a party of celebrities in a penthouse garden. The fashion would be worn by good looking young women of the New York society, rather than by models, and I would photograph them casually, while they were talking, drinking or having fun with other guests. The pictures looked different from anything that had previously been published in the magazine, and even Nancy White was delighted, until she noticed that one of the guests was a black diplomat from the UN. "If we show the girls with this person, none of them will be eligible for marriage". She eventually agreed to publish the sequence, but some of the best photographs had to be dropped.

One day Marvin asked me if I had any bright idea for photographing High Fashion in Florence and Rome. This was one of the most prestigious assignments the magazine had to offer, second only to High Fashion in Paris. The first idea that came to my mind was "La Dolce Vita": so I suggested photographing the models in the company of famous Italian men, who couldn't fail being good looking, well dressed and willing to flirt with a beautiful model - especially if this was Deborah Dixon, a blond, blue-eyed beauty, whom I had never met in real life, but whom I was dying to have in front of my camera. Nancy White approved of the project, and decided that I should team up with China Machado, a eurasian model turned fashion editor, who would also model some of the dresses.

The sessions took about two weeks and were among the most strenuous of my career. I had problems with the Italian celebrities, who against my expectations cared more about their own image than about flirting with the model, other problems with the editor, who insisted on making Deborah wear ridiculous hats and layers of makeup, and still more problems with Deborah herself, who turned out to be as cold as a fish. But, by some mysterious alchemy, these hindrances (or my stubborn fight to overcome them) seemed to add impact to the photographs: had I been allowed to make the softer and sexier images that I had in mind, the result might not have been as powerful.

The following summer, BAZAAR assigned me to photograph High Fashion in Paris. For the sake of symmetry (or for the lack of a better idea) I suggested relating the models to famous French women. This worked in some cases, but the sequence didn't have as much impact as the one in Italy.

Some time later, I decided to accept a big photo-journalistic assignment and to stay out of fashion photography for a while. While I was away, Marvin Israel was evicted from the magazine and replaced by his two assistants, Ruth Ansel and Bea Feitler, who managed to stay on the job a little longer then their predecessors. They gave me several interesting assignments, including High Fashion in Paris in 1967.