In the past few years we’ve seen a sudden spate of documentaries focused on the fashion world, from fascinating profiles of the mostly gay designers (Valentino, Lagerfeld, Armani and the upcoming one on Yves St. Laurent) to those who chronicle the business (most notably, Anna Wintour and her Vogue staff in The September Issue). To this latter category we can now add Bill Cunningham New York. Cunningham, whose photographs illustrate not one but two columns in the New York Times, is as fashion-obsessed as his fellow fashionistas. However, Cunningham’s obsession goes much further than his more renowned and infamous compatriots. As director Richard Press’ exuberant, telling film nimbly reveals, here is a fashion purist who cares nothing for the trappings of the glittery world he inhabits. For Cunningham, it really is all about the clothes.
Darting around his native habitat—the stone jungle of Manhattan—on foot or on bicycle number 29 (the previous 28 having been stolen) and barely heeding the ever present traffic around him, the spry octogenarian is always at work, busily photographing the denizens of New York City and spotting fashion trends long before his media competitors. At 80, Cunningham has been documenting fashion in his beloved city since the mid-’60s. “The best fashion show is definitely on the street,” he comments before whipping out his camera, spotting another outrageous outfit. The cameraperson is put to the test trying to keep up with Cunningham when he spots another potential wildly fabulous ensemble. And what better canvas could someone with such a passion for fashion dream of? For those sharing Cunningham’s appreciation of the artistic, the fashion forward, the truly outre, the film is an eye-popping delight while the list of dazzling fashion eccentrics that populate Cunningham’s beat, many of them appearing on camera singing his praises, are nearly enough to cast a modern-day Fellini film.
Cunningham’s obsession with these ultrasophisticates isn’t hard to understand. Although he professes over and over that all he cares about is their eye-popping outfits, a common shared artistic sensibility is quickly discerned in those who delight him. (Cunningham must have loved Little Edie Beale of Grey Gardens fame.) This predilection for the artist’s life becomes fixed, as we slowly learn a bit about Cunningham’s life when he isn’t working. (Most telling, he doesn’t give a whit about money.) Deeply ensconced in a tiny artist’s garret in Carnegie Hall, hemmed in by filing cabinets containing negatives of all his photos and thousands of art books, Cunningham introduces us to his lively fellow artists. The grande dame, Editta Sherman, a onetime Warhol muse and a legendary celebrity photographer, presides over her artists’ atelier with a vitality that, at 96, is clearly still driven by an artistic sensibility.
After we meet Editta and some of Cunningham’s other neighbors, we spend time involved in their campaign to prevent management from kicking them out of their rent-controlled apartments after decades of residence—this is also a movie about a way of life and traditions that are quickly disappearing. However, Cunningham’s passion for fashion and approaching deadlines loom and soon the energetic photographer is racing back out to the streets. We then follow him as he works on his second New York Times column, “Evening Hours,” in which the city’s rich and socially prominent fete each other at a series of lavish benefits and balls. Friends suspect that Cunningham’s ease with the super-rich (as he is seen documenting Brooke Astor’s 100th birthday and is described as having been part of her inner circle) has something to do with a suspected background in wealth himself. However, viewers later learn just the opposite and, although we see the charming Cunningham joking easily with the wealthy and famous, his intent is clearly about getting an interesting picture. We eventually learn that he has never so much as accepted a glass of water from his hosts—afraid to tempt fate or sully his impeccable reputation.
Slowly—as Cunningham works with an art director at the Times on his two columns, and then travels to Paris to record the fashion shows as a professional spectator and honored guest (rather than as a media journalist)—we begin to gain some deeper understanding of this man, whose work is his life. A code of honor and discipline quietly emerges and it’s no surprise to learn of Cunningham’s working-class Catholic background, which we intuit must have been very rigid. A stint in the Army in the early ’50s was followed by work as a hat designer that, in turn, led to a career documenting fashion for a variety of publications. For his dedication and absolute fealty (and true discretion), Cunningham could not be held in higher regard by the list of celebrated names whose legendary careers in the fashion business he has chronicled. (He is awarded the French Legion of Honor during the film’s emotional high point.)
Clearly, though, there have been huge personal sacrifices. Not one of his famous subjects or many of those identified as close friends seems to know much beyond his sunny exterior. When asked point-blank toward the end of the film if he’s ever had so much as a romance, he calmly replies that there wasn’t time or any real inclination. But next, in response to a direct question about whether he is gay or not, he nearly breaks down and then muses with a touch of irony that his family obviously thought so. He leaves it at that and quickly steers the conversation in another direction. Suddenly, Cunningham’s earlier comment about attending weekly Mass—”To repent”—takes on an underlying, unspoken sadness. Have we just watched the profile of a man who so reviled his gay sexuality that he subsumed it in service to a life in pursuit of his art? Or is there something, somewhere inbetween?
Ultimately, as Cunningham tacitly asserts, the answer doesn’t matter. For a true artist, it’s the output that is the most important and if certain viewers glean a gay sensibility at work, so be it.
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