BILL CUNNINGHAM NEW YORK


“On the Street,” Bill Cunningham’s column of street style, has appeared in the New York Times since December 1978. Now a new documentary by Richard Press, Bill Cunningham New York, finally gives voice to one of the most unsung heroes of fashion.  In the film, Cunningham is rightly credited as the innovator of street-style photography, which believe it or not existed before the blogosphere. His work developed from his innate instinct to capture trends and ideas that weren’t coming from the runways and glossy pages, but from real people wearing real clothes in really unique ways.

Now 82, Bill Cunningham has devoted his life to the deceptively simple task of documenting beauty. His immense body of work has not failed to attract international attention. As Cunningham is inducted into the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, he tearfully and triumphantly cries out, “He who seeketh beauty shall findeth.” And Cunningham recognizes that beauty is found in the street.

For the world’s fashion magazines, fashion is about new faces, new talent, and hot parties. For Cunningham, fashion is about style. A man with an encyclopedic knowledge of haute couture wears a French street sweeper’s smock. A man who regularly dines in delis is the chronicler of our city’s most exclusive galas and balls. Cunningham doesn’t yield to the pressure of the fashion world. He photographs what he finds to be beautiful, not what an editor deems beautiful this month.

Bill Cunningham is an inside-outsider, at once part of the fashion world, yet skeptical of its principles and mechanics. For the like-minded and similarly conflicted, Cunningham is a great hero. To be successful in fashion, there is a game to be played, and Cunningham is not always a team player. He gives me hope. He is living proof that fashion isn’t all about winning over who’s who. Anna Wintour, of all people, describes the feeling of personal failure when Cunningham doesn’t raise his camera towards her.

However, it is Tom Wolfe who sums it up best when he confides, “It is very difficult to be honest in New York, very difficult.” The truth of his statement lends even more significance to the achievements of Bill Cunningham. He’s beaten the odds. Not to say it was a simple matter, but who doesn’t like a challenge?

  • Share

Related