Decades before fashion bloggers like The Sartorialist, Face Hunter and Garance Doré brought street style to the masses, there was Bill Cunningham. Since 1978, his weekly On The Street column in the New York Times has catalogued that citys fashion parade, while his Evening Hours column captured the opulent A-listers of Manhattans party circuit. The original, perhaps accidental, proponent of high/low fashion, Cunningham has remained a stalwart iconoclast throughout his career observing but never truly participating in the frenzied fashion world around him.
It was the dichotomy of an intentionally peripheral figure who nonetheless wields great power that drew filmmaker Richard Press to make his first documentary, Bill Cunningham New York, opening Friday at International Village. A loving, but never cloying tribute, the film follows the 80-year-old Cunningham as he rides his Schwinn around the streets of New York day after day returning to a warren-like loft in Carnegie Hall each night.
The portrait that emerges is one of a near recluse, albeit one who holds a very high profile. What soon becomes apparent is that Cunningham lives for his work and that his work literally is his life (this is no exaggeration). One wonders if he would ever leave his cramped pied-à-terre if he werent forced to with the nature of his career.
In the fashion community, where personal style is a calling card, Cunninghams workaday sartorial choices are unusual. Clad each day in the same cords, baby blue sweater and indigo jacket (of the same type worn by Parisian sanitation workers), Cunningham is summarily disinterested in fashion as it applies to himself. His gaze is always outward and always, always focused on the clothes. When a gaggle of papparazzi encircle Catherine Deneuve at Paris Fashion Week, Cunningham avoids the scrum, saying that shes not wearing anything interesting so he doesnt care to photograph her. His avoidance of TV, movies, and other media mean he isnt aware of whos hot and whos not. It truly is all about the clothes and its been that way since before his career at the Times began in 1978 after he caught reclusive retired film star Greta Garbo on film, not because he knew who she was, but because he liked what she was wearing.
If theres any complaint one might have about the the movie, its that it leaves you wanting to know so much more. Friends and acquaintances routinely admit that they dont really know Bill they love him and respect him, but they dont know him. And theres an undercurrent of sadness and a loneliness to his existence that crashes through the screen near the end, when the filmmaker asks Cunningham if hes ever been in love and about his religious beliefs. Theres a long, heartrending silence upon which the viewer can project their own fears and demons.
And yet the mystery of why Bill Cunningham lives the way he does is also satisfying, much like not knowing how a magician does his tricks. It is a portrait of a fascinating man who spent his life avoiding the camera.
