David Attie have been flashing before his eyes, and at the wrong exposure. Brodovitch loved the montages. He spent the entire class gushing over them." On the final night of the course, Brodovitch gave Attie his first professional assignment, which was to create a series of photo montages to illustrate Truman Capote's newest work, Breakfast at Tiffany's, for Harper's in 1958. But while Attie completed the montages, Capote began to clash with the publisher of Harper's, the Hearst Corporation, over the tart language and subject matter of his novella. Alice Morris, the magazine's literary editor, later recounted that Capote agreed to make
Breakfast at Tiffany's (novella) that he "would not be interested if ["Esquire"] did not use Attie's [original series of] photographs." He wrote to "Esquire" fiction editor Rust Hills, "I'm happy that you are using [Attie's] pictures, as I think they are excellent." But to his disappointment, "Esquire" ran just one full-page image of Attie's (another was later used as the cover of at least one paperback edition of the novella). The novella appeared in the November, 1958 issue. Shortly afterward, a collection of the novella and three short stories by Capote was published by Random House—and the glowing reviews caused sales of the "Esquire"