A scene from Bill Cunningham New York.
By John Thomason
Less than two years after The September Issue probed the life and work of fashion kingmaker Anna Wintour, a new documentary offers a look at another figure residing in the nexus of fashion and print journalism.
In Bill Cunningham New York, which opens Friday in South Florida, the subject is New York Times fashion photographer Cunningham, a man just as iconoclastic – and more enigmatic – than Vogue’s Wintour. Even Wintour herself manages to descend from her haute perch to say in the documentary, with surprising humility, that “we all get dressed up for Bill.”
The film argues that Cunningham, through his columns and photo spreads in everything from Details to Women’s Wear Daily to the Times, has been the most important chronicler-turned-trendmaker in the past half-century of fashion. Cunningham is 82 years young, a spry workaholic in a functional blue jacket whose daily routine sees him ubiquitously cruising Manhattan streets on his Schwinn, snapping candid shots of outfits that catch his learned eye. At night, he attends the metropolitan area’s signature social soirees, photographing luminaries.
As someone who knows less than nothing about fashion, I found Cunningham an inspiring artist – a counterintuitive, countercultural working man in a world of materialistic elites. We assume he collects a paycheck from the Times, but Cunningham vocalizes contempt for money, ceremoniously tearing up paychecks for some of his early freelance assignments. “If you don’t touch money, they can’t tell you what to do,” he says. He washes his clothes at a Laundromat, eats TV dinners and never takes a drop of food or alcohol at the glitzy galas he covers.
Cunningham is a charming, self-deprecating figure full of contrarian wit: He had no interest in photographing Marilyn Monroe, he says, because she “wasn’t stylish.” He takes an egalitarian approach to fashion photography, where movie stars, visiting dignitaries and bag ladies on the street share equal weight. The person doesn’t matter; only the clothes do.
As in The September Issue, Bill Cunningham New York feels the need to address the supposed frivolity of fashion, becoming unnecessarily defensive of a culture that, at this point, needs little justification of its merits. After all, the fashion-industry staples who are interviewed for the film – including Wintour, designer Iris Apfel, fashionistas Patrick McDonald and Kenny Kenny, and Shail Upadhya, a retired U.N. official from Nepal who makes eccentric clothing out of used furniture – come across as intelligent, witty and down to earth, not as the vapid celebutantes Tom Wolfe (who is also interviewed for the film) and others diagnose them. Only once does one of the film’s subjects offer an insulting, out-of-touch soundbite, when she compares the work Cunningham does on the city streets to that of a war photographer.
The film dips into its murkiest, and most interesting, waters when trying to extract a personal life out of the notoriously secretive Cunningham. For Bill, it seems that everything is work, and work is everything. He’s never had a serious romantic relationship, he says, and the question of his sexuality remains unknown all the way to the credits. He’s also a privately religious man, attending church every Sunday – a revelation that clearly shocks director Richard Press.
When asked later about his faith, Cunningham hangs his head for an epic silence – watching it, you may think the film is stuck in the projector – before offering a meditative answer. It’s just one of the many ways this film, and the man it documents, confound our expectations.
BILL CUNNINGHAM NEW YORK. Director: Richard Press; not rated; distributor: Zeitgeist Films; opens Friday; venues: Living Room Theaters at FAU in Boca Raton, Lake Worth Playhouse, Mos’ Art Theatre in Lake Park, Gateway Theatre 4 in Fort Lauderdale, the Miami Beach Cinematheque and the Cosford Cinema in Coral Gables.