You probably haven’t heard of Bill Cunningham. The octogenarian New York Times photographer is no celebrity name, no Mario Testino or Annie Leibovitz. Yet to the fashion aristocracy of New York and Paris, Cunningham is one of the distinctive and respected names in the business. A couple of approving snaps from Cunningham’s camera are a gold standard. As Vogue editor Anna Wintour admits, “we all get dressed for Bill”. To be ignored by this genial figure with his trademark bicycle and blue windbreaker is sartorial death.
Richard Press’s Bill Cunningham New York is a documentary that follows Cunningham as he goes about his cheerful days. A pioneer of street style photography, Cunningham is “a fashion egalitarian” as happy snapping bag ladies as he cycles through the city as he is photographing preening socialites at charity galas. At one stage he describes how in his heyday he would have the likes of Joan Crawford and Marilyn Monroe wandering through his studio, but he wasn’t interested “because they weren’t stylish”. To Cunningham clothes are king, and whether you’re a drag queen at a party or a business woman jumping through puddles, if you’re wearing killer hot pink ankle boots then you’re worth a shot.
Like all good documentaries, Bill Cunningham New York is packed with extraordinary characters. Gloriously decadent society figures, from Wintour to Tom Wolfe, play warm tribute, icy fashion hearts melting in the face of this glorious character. Cunningham’s friends and subjects are, naturally, irrepressibly vibrant. A Nepalese diplomat models suits made entirely of polka dots or tartan like Mr Benn through a kaleidoscope, whilst another octogenarian, the “world’s oldest teenager” Iris Afnel, blinks cheerfully from behind huge round spectacles like an exotic, glistening beetle. Most wonderful of all is Cunningham’s neighbour Editta Sherman, the “Queen of Carnegie Hall” who once danced “The Dying Swan” for Andy Warhol, and now happily models Bill’s old hat designs and points to the photographs she herself has taken of Tilda Swinton and Henry Fonda. “I am a legend” she proclaims, as she totters and mutters and demands coffee, whilst Cunningham giggles continuously in the background.
Without a doubt however this is Cunningham’s film. A touchingly candid interviewee, he is a fashion monk, perfectly content to live in a bedsit with filing cabinets instead of a kitchen and admitting that he has never had a romantic relationship because he is entirely fulfilled by his work. And what work. Cunningham’s career spans every imaginable trend, from Annie Hall masculine tailoring, to low slung jeans, to men in skirts, every image taken of normal everyday New Yorkers. As one colleague proclaims, Cunningham’s camera lens is always humane, “incapable of a cruel picture”, the antithesis of paparazzi celeb baiting. In one scene a crowd of baying photographers surround Catherine Deneuve at a premiere whilst Cunningham stands by entirely unbothered.
Cunningham’s unimpeachable integrity is remarkable, never even taking so much as a glass of water at the society fixtures he circulates to ensure he never feels the need to bow to social politics. “Money is the cheapest thing, liberty, freedom the most expensive” he proclaims grinning widely, whilst colleague recount his constant refusals to cash his cheques from Conde Naste. When Cunningham describes how he left one magazine because they changed his copy to make him sound cruel he is visibly upset. He genuinely cares not just about clothes, but about the women who wear them, a sincere cheerleader for creativity and beauty.
No matter how you feel about the importance of fashion, this is a film that leaves you grinning irresistibly, as warm, humane and witty as its irrepressible title character. In one touching scene Cunningham modestly negotiates with the overzealous door staff at a catwalk show before an outraged designer pulls him in exclaiming “oh please, he’s the most important person on Earth!” At least for the duration of this utterly absorbing documentary, anyone who had a heart would have to agree.