Mark Bozek’s documentary, The Times of Bill Cunningham, features a fresh look at his subject from a 1994 taped interview: Hard working and uniquely talented, Bill Cunningham eschewed the limelight yet pursued and promoted style, at celebrity functions and on the street, often perched on his bike on the corner of Fifth Avenue and 59th Street where Bergdorf Goodman sits majestically. Ah, the department store. It’s a dying breed, just like the self-effacing Cunningham himself. Anna Wintour famously quipped, “We all get dressed for Bill,” extolling the special fame of fashion and street photographer Bill Cunningham. When he died in 2016, Wintour wondered if there’d ever be another like him.
Illustrating New England frugality, Cunningham lived for years in a Carnegie Hall cubicle, sharing a bathroom with his floor mates. He had arrived in the city to work at Bonwit Tellers, becoming the milliner William J, the hatmaker of socialites. He met everyone before they were anyone, and, needless to say, he had marvelous stories:
Marlon Brando slept at his place, to escape his fans.
Jessica Lange slept on his floor. For
Jackie Kennedy he personally dyed a red Balenciaga dress black, suited to Jack’s funeral. Overall, he admired women of style—such as Mrs. Paley and
Brooke Astor—over stars like
Joan Crawford and
Ginger Rogers, all fabulous, but not necessarily tasteful. He was less interested in the way stars were dressed by costumers, than how women dressed in their lives.
The documentary’s narration, from Sarah Jessica Parker, keeps pace with the photos; his letters in her voice provide a backstory to what he doesn’t reveal in his interview. He is essentially shy, he says. When another documentary, Bill Cunningham New York opened the New Directors/ New Films Festival in 2010 at MoMA, Cunningham stayed outside, photographing guests. He never saw the film. With the new film, he is having a moment. A coffee-table book, Bill Cunningham on the Street, was published in 2019 featuring five decades of his iconic photography.
To my astonishment, I appear on page 292, wearing a favorite dress, a Moschino Cheap & Chic take on a Roy Lichtenstein print. I remember Cunningham pointing his lens at the skirt, on an image of a cartoon face, taken at a Metropolitan Museum opening. But the shot in the book was different, one that I did not see him shoot. Just shows something special in his work. He wanted the un-posed, un-self-conscious. Yes, I had dressed for Bill that day. And he did me one better.
I came to your blog in a round about way. I signed up for Yad Vashem's IRemember Wall and was matched with Regina Sturcovski nee Weinreich. She was born in 1898 in Lodz, Poland, married to Isaak and had a lovely smile. I'm grateful her memory brought me to your blog. I've bookmarked it.
Posted by: Jennifer Turner | January 27, 2021 at 08:05 PM