That was my only attempt at paparazzi until Kate White, the editor-in-chief of American Cosmopolitan, asked me to shoot her coming out of the Four Seasons in New York with Angie Harmon 15 years later. A few months after the Royal assignment, I was hired for my first fashion shoot for 19 Magazine. I decided that it was now time to relocate to the gold paved streets of London Town. My first few years in London were quite a struggle, as magazines did not pay much for a fashion story and even less for a portrait. The Tatler was paying me £30 a portrait and I maybe did five or six for them a month. But I had to pay for my own film and processing and travel out of that. I switched to Harper’s Bazaar (then called Harper’s and Queen) when they offered me £75 for each photo published. A magazine had commissioned a photo of my friend David wearing a beautiful jacket and a trilby. On the day, I was looking for a way to make the image even more memorable and remembered that on a Spike Lee shoot for Harper’s & Queen, I had stolen a bottle of Jack Daniels from his hotel mini-bar. Spike had been so rude to me that I was looking for a small token of revenge. I stuck this miniature bottle to the front of the Trilby with some double-sided tape. An art director at a very trendy agency in London saw this photo and called in my book for a fashion campaign for a new chain of menswear stores called Radius. My overdraft at the time was £3000 and the bank letters were piling up in my hallway. The job paid me £5000 plus expenses and a month later I was holidaying in Antigua. The shoot itself was very stressful, as I didn’t have an agent at the time. I had to do all the production myself as well as negotiating all the fees with models, hair and makeup, stylist, and catering, as well as hiring a Winnebago for the location days of the shoot. Although, I told everyone to invoice the agency and not me, thankfully!
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8 5. Ellen Pinaffi for Yong Andersson Paris 6. Oxana for Marina Ruiz Paris 7. Oxana for Marina Ruiz Paris 8. Erik Sakai for Dave Klibanoff
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