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Edited by Linda Morand
London -New York -Paris- 1967 - 68
During that same collection time I was booked in Paris by Helmut Newton for French Vogue and this was the first time I did pictures for them, in the few months I had been in London I had done plenty of English Vogue but the French Vogue was hot and sophisticated avant-garde and Paris beautiful. The model I was going to work with was Donyale Luna! Wow, she was gorgeous and full of energy and with her charm immediately took over the whole studio . The clothes were all Courègges which looked great on her, like some one from an other planet. Courègges was quite far out but not
at all my style and I did not feel comfortable in them, especially beside Donyale who was doing her amazing thing, like an incredible dance and I felt very small. In my mind she was very tall and she probably was, it was so special that I had to give her all the space. I never met her after that but it was an amazing experience to have worked with her.
| Willy with her Double Vogue Newton 
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Things were going fast and around that same time English Vogue send me with David Bailey and his wife Catherine Denueve to NY where Bailey was going to do some shoots for American Vogue and I was going to meet Eileen Ford who was interested to meet me.
I was very well received and was invited to stay a few of the days I was there at her house, which was better than alone in a hotel in a city where you don't know a
person. I don't remember much but the house was incredible, dinners, a party, models coming and going. I only remember Maud Adams very well because she was so nice and kind, I have that incredible smiling picture of her in my mind. |  | |
Eileen sent me to see Diane Vreeland , so I dressed the best I could and put flowers in my hair and took a taxi to her office. She wanted to look at me at a certain distance and she asked me to turn and show my profile and turn again and with her hands she looked at me as through a camera and I did the best of my poses because she really impressed me although I did not really know how important a person she was in the fashion world.
She sent me to see Richard Avedon, so I took a taxi to his studio and rang the bell. A young man (an assistant) opened the door and I said I came to see Mr Avedon, He asked for my book but I did not have any with me, He said: ¨Mr .Avedon is very busy,¨and before I could say that Diane Vreeland send me the door already was closed. I was booked the next day for Vogue and was leaving the day after so never got to see the great American Photographer,
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| It was very busy at the Vogue studio and everybody seemed to know everybody and I did not know anybody except for Bailey who was very busy photographing Lauren Hutton. Another amazing experience to see Lauren do her thing. It was incredible the way she moved and how confident she was and such a happy person. I felt lost but she was very nice to me, sort of took care of me, very sweet. At the end of the day I finally got to do one picture but it was all in a hurry.
The picture is in my album. That was my first time in NY and I was very impressed with that city. Although I had traveled for two and a half years through Asia ( from Holland to Japan and back over land and sea) this was my first time to America and I was sure I was going to go back there one day.
| Back in England I got a contract with Yardley beauty products with Helmut Newton, which came out all over England but in that time a contract like that didn't mean much. but those retouched pictures were fun.
A known display doll firm wanted to make a mannequin of me and offered me a very nice contract and a lot of publicity............
There was a big inauguration at a specialized Fair in London and all the press was there and my agency ( Peter Lumley) made me a great contract in which I would receive one English pound Sterling for every doll sold and the money would automatically go to my account which I opened especially for this occasion.
I am telling all this because this becomes a ¨funny¨ story. The popular Dutch newspaper ¨ The Telegraaf¨ declared me already a millionaire and dedicated a whole page.
The Mysterious Willy is a New Millionaire
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Helmut Newton did a wonderful spread of me and my likeness for English Vogue ( see pictures in Album) and an article that was made in Germany for ¨STERN ¨was later in magazines all over Europe, so I did get plenty of publicity.
But my heart was somewhere else and my ambitions had melted like snow in the sun. I was in love and wanted to be only with my (now) husband and have a good time. The world is big and there were a lot of things going on everywhere.
My agency was going nuts because I would disappear and show up months later somewhere completely different. In Milan I was with the Ricardo Gay agency, then still quite small and he very young (good agent). I worked almost every day with Olivieri Toscani who had just started as a fashion photographer and was so enthusiastic and happy that it was a great pleasure to work with him in his living room which served as a studio with his wife making coffees and lunches. I also did some nice series with Gianpaolo Barbieri, he could make you look very glamorous and I think it was than that I met Dayle Haddon who wrote me later several letters, already a writer, and with unbelievable beautiful eyes. We got along straight away. I was pregnant and it started to show so from Milan we went to Brazil and after many adventures I delivered our baby in Vancouver and from there to the USA.
First Los Angeles, where I had been a few weeks before going to Vancouver and I wish I could thank the wonderful people I met who took me up like we were old friends or family.
But that was 68 and there was a bond between people who had a similar outlook on life and money had no importance, The thing was (and is) to be creatively beautiful inside out or outside in and see the amazing diversity of life and take the time to enjoy it... there is only NOW, was the feeling.
|  By now I had forgotten all about my Window Display dolls, in the past I had sometimes taken money from that account but it was complicated in that time and I had lost my passbook in all the moving and traveling. I did not think that too many got sold and did not give much importance to it although I it did see the dolls in the windows of department stores in LA and NY, I think at Macy's? 
| NEXT From LA to NY because I wanted to get back to work and NY was a new and exiting place.
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