Fashion Climbing

Description

The New York Times bestseller

“[An] obscenely enjoyable romp.” —The New York Times Book Review

The untold story of a New York City legend’s education in creativity and style

For Bill Cunningham, New York City was the land of freedom, glamour, and, above all, style. Growing up in a lace-curtain Irish suburb of Boston, secretly trying on his sister’s dresses and spending his evenings after school in the city’s chicest boutiques, Bill dreamed of a life dedicated to fashion. But his desires were a source of shame for his family, and after dropping out of Harvard, he had to fight them tooth-and-nail to pursue his love.

When he arrived in New York, he reveled in people-watching. He spent his nights at opera openings and gate-crashing extravagant balls, where he would take note of the styles, new and old, watching how the gowns moved, how the jewels hung, how the hair laid on each head. This was his education, and the birth of the democratic and exuberant taste that he came to be famous for as a photographer for The New York Times. After two style mavens took Bill under their wing, his creativity thrived and he made a name for himself as a designer. Taking on the alias William J.–because designing under his family’s name would have been a disgrace to his parents–Bill became one of the era’s most outlandish and celebrated hat designers, catering to movie stars, heiresses, and artists alike. Bill’s mission was to bring happiness to the world by making women an inspiration to themselves and everyone who saw them. These were halcyon days when fashion was all he ate and drank. When he was broke and hungry he’d stroll past the store windows on Fifth Avenue and feed himself on beautiful things.

Fashion Climbing is the story of a young man striving to be the person he was born to be: a true original. But although he was one of the city’s most recognized and treasured figures, Bill was also one of its most guarded. Written with his infectious joy and one-of-a-kind voice, this memoir was polished, neatly typewritten, and safely stored away in his lifetime. He held off on sharing it–and himself–until his passing. Between these covers, is an education in style, an effervescent tale of a bohemian world as it once was, and a final gift to the readers of one of New York’s great characters.“This obscenely enjoyable romp fills in part of the Cunningham back story and provides tantalizing peeks in the psyche of the guarded and mysterious Bill. . . . [Fashion Climbing] leaves the readers gasping for more.” —The New York Times Book Review

“Bill Cunningham left behind a memoir. It is, to use one of his favorite words, marvelous.” —The Washington Post

“Cunningham’s memoir is a charming ode to being true to oneself.” —NPR

“Fashion Climbing is smart and pure, revealing of a person’s sense of truth, self, business, confidence and wonderment at the world. . . It is tremendously important in fraught times that we remember we can devote ourselves to finding inspiration, pursuing dreams and chasing joy.” —Los Angeles Times
 
“Legendary New York Times street-style photographer Bill Cunningham left us one final treat: A memoir as sweet, modest and compelled by beauty as Cunningham . . . The midcentury world of salon fashion shows and great society dowagers Cunningham evokes offers a fabulous escape.” —San Francisco Chronicle

“An unexpected gift . . .  a Strunk and White of chic.” —The New York Times

“A fun, enthralling look into the unconventional world of a true original.” —Boston Globe
 
“Bill Cunningham’s Is The Fashion Memoir Everyone Will Be Reading This Autumn.” —Elle
  
“Legendary fashion photographer Bill Cunningham died in 2016, but he’s brilliantly alive in Fashion Climbing, a posthumously published memoir chronicling his early days as a young man in Boston, a soldier in Europe during the Korean War, and a hat designer in glamorous midcentury New York. In addition to having a wild imagination for millinery and an unmatched eye for genuine style, Cunningham writes of his near-psychic ability for knowing where fashion was headed next.” —Entertainment Weekly
 
“The phenomenal joie de vivre of the legendary New York Times photographer, who died at 87 in 2016, bursts off the pages of this chronicle of the early days of his career. His escapades as a renegade hat designer in New York, an Army private in Europe, a gate –crasher and people watcher in high society are enchanting, his passion for fashion irresistible.” —People 

“Delightful.” —Minneapolis Star Tribune

“The photographer’s posthumously published memoir is a thoughtful, accessible glimpse inside the fashion world he chronicled for decades. . . . The true treasure of Fashion Climbing is that the man who spent his life holding up a mirror to the world’s most self-important industry, in the world’s most self-important city, turns the mirror around to make a subject of himself.” —Vanity Fair

“[Cunningham’s] genuine, undying appetite for beauty radiates from the book’s pages, making it a delight to consume.” —The Cut

“Bill Cunningham’s memoir traces a righteous pursuit of beauty. Fashion Climbing, the fashion photographer’s posthumous autobiography, is just as fun as you’d expect.” —The Outline

“As you read about his journey to the top you’ll definitely laugh and, most importantly, learn why it’s crucial to always be yourself.” —InStyle, 10 Fashion Books That Deserve a Spot On Your Bookshelf

“As a record of a life fuelled by flair and dedication, a highly original vocation which pitches the author somewhere between Cecil Beaton, Anna Pavlova and a Benedictine monk, Fashion Climbing is a joy to read.” —Financial Times

“The glamorous world of 20th-century fashion comes alive in Cunningham’s masterful memoir both because of his exuberant appreciation for stylish clothes and his sharp assessment of those who wore them.” —Publishers Weekly, Boxed, Starred Review
 
“Cunningham’s writing is authentic, irreverent, and quintessentially New York . . .  A lively tale of a life in style and a delightful homage to the days before women stopped wearing hats.” —Kirkus Reviews

“Cunningham’s almost unbearably charming memoir—unearthed by relatives after his death, in 2016, and covering his life through the 1960s—sends readers winging through the twentieth century in style….[It]documents his unparalleled eye and appreciation for fashion’s magic, mystery, and illusions; style’s potential to invent and transform. As both the very personal autobiography of an icon and a valuable social history, this wins.” — Booklist, starred review

“Bill Cunningham’s enchanting memoir of his love affair with fashion and the people who created, shaped, analysed, and wore it in the combustible years after the Second World War is a delight and a revelation, proving that his pen was as astute as his lens. This lively, compelling, and invaluable social history tells us as much about the mores of the age as it does about the era’s seismic fashion revolutions and reflects the wonder that Bill saw in creation throughout his life.” —Hamish Bowles

“We missed Bill Cunningham terribly. So thank goodness for this book. Here comes a snap, crackle and pop of a memoir. Humble, sparse and vivacious. Funny! Forthright and elegant. Bill is back and we are grateful.” —Maira Kalman

“As Mr. Cunningham might have said, ‘a real dilly’ of a book—the story of a man who turned a love of beauty into an exquisite life.” —Lauren Collins

“Fashion Climbing has everything you’d want in a fashion memoir (industry politics, elaborate window displays, hijinks at galas), but it’s also a manifesto for living authentically. Just like Bill Cunningham’s photography, this book is anti-snobbery, pro-having-fun-at-all-costs, and awake to the pleasures of being oneself.” —Tavi GevinsonBill Cunningham, the iconic New York Times photographer, was the creative force behind the columns On the Street and Evening Hours. Cunningham dropped out of Harvard and moved to New York City at 19, eventually starting his own hat design business under the name “William J.” His designs were featured in Vogue, The New Yorker, Harper’s Bazaar, and Jet. While covering fashion for publications including Women’s Wear Daily and The Chicago Tribune, he took up photography, which led to him becoming a regular contributor to the New York Times in the late 1970s. Cunningham is the subject of the documentaries “The Times of Bill Cunningham” and “Bill Cunningham, New York.” His contributions to New York City were recognized in 2009 when he was designated a “living landmark.”The Doors of Paradise

My first remembrance of fashion was the day my mother caught me parading around our middle-class Catholic home in a lace-curtain Irish suburb of Boston. There I was, four years old, decked out in my sister’s prettiest dress. Women’s clothes were always much more stimulating to my imagination. That summer day, in 1933, as my back was pinned to the dining room wall, my eyes spattering tears all over the pink organdy full-skirted dress, my mother beat the hell out of me, and threatened every bone in my uninhibited body if I wore girls’ clothes again. My dear parents gathered all their Bostonian reserve and decided the best cure was to hide me from any artistic or fashionable life. This wasn’t hard in suburban Boston; a drab puritanical life prevailed, brightened only by Christmas, Easter, the Thanksgiving Day parade, Halloween, Valentine’s Day, and the maypole costume party in kindergarten. My life was lived for each of these special days when I could express all the fancy thoughts in my head. Of course, Christmas was the blowout of the year, and I started wrapping the packages months before anyone dreamed of another Christmas. The tree ornaments were packed away in the attic, where I usually dusted them off with a trial run in midsummer and prepared a plan of decoration for the coming season.

When Christmas came, I must have redecorated the tree a half dozen times in the short week it was left to stand, and when New Year’s Day arrived and the tree was to be thrown out on the street, a deep depression usually set upon me, as I tucked all the glamour, the shiny tinsel, away for another eternally long year, and only the thought of Valentine’s Day with its lace-trimmed displays of love made life bearable.

Easter Sunday was always a high point. I can remember every one of Mother’s hats, which were absolute knockouts to my eyes, but when I look back today, they were all very conservative. My two sisters and brother Jack (who was all sports-minded) and I were outfitted in new clothes for Easter Sunday. This was the dandy day of my life. I can’t remember a thing the priest said during Mass, but I sure as hell could describe every interesting fashion worn by the two hundred or so ladies, and for the following few Sundays I kept an accurate record of which ladies wore their Easter Sunday flower corsages longest, emerging from the refrigerators for the Sunday airing.

The next excitement I can remember was the maypole costume party where I managed, much to my conservative family’s embarrassment, to be a crepe paper pansy, violet, or daffodil. I always had a ball playing make-believe, and usually got hell when my mother got her hands on me, as I’d play with the girls, mainly because their costumes were the most beautiful roses. The boys were bees and caterpillars, which didn’t interest me a bit.

Summers were a fashion desert. Our small beach house on the south shore of Boston allowed nothing but bathing suits and T-shirts, and lots of horrible sunburn on the miles of salty beach. No one ever wore anything colorful or gay. Each Sunday’s church was the only adventure as my brother and sisters and I were wrapped in starched white clothes and chalk-white shoes. During the reading of the Gospel, I eyed every woman and decided who was the most elegant. It was a wonderful game, and by the end of each summer I would produce my list of the women at the beach whom I thought most exciting.

Going back to school was really the monster for me. I couldn’t have cared less about reading, writing, and arithmetic-and they cared much less for me! It was only through the grace of God and the teachers, who didn’t want to have me around another year, that I finished each school year. The only class I remember was a weekly one-hour art session where the most delightful, slightly eccentric teacher would read Winnie-the-Pooh and tell us about Mrs. Jack Gardner’s Venetian palace, set in Boston’s Back Bay. This was my hour of pure dream and fantasy. Of course, I immediately fell passionately in love with Mrs. Jack Gardner and her gilded palace, and to this very day she is my inspiration.

Life really began for me on my first visit to Mrs. Jack’s. That marvelous art teacher took the class to view what she called a “Renaissance splendor.” It was the opening of the doors of paradise for me, and there was no stopping my desire to create a world of exotic beauty. No matter how many times my mother caught me wearing my sister’s first long party dress, which was peach satin-and I know I wore it more than she did-I knew my destiny was to create beautiful women and place them in fantastic surroundings.

After school was the most fun, as I would hide in my room and build model airplanes and theatrical stage sets. Each month I would concoct a special display for the season, and I was forever talking the girls next door into putting on a dramatic play where I made all the crepe paper costumes and usually ended up wearing the highest crown or the longest train of purple, trimmed with my dad’s notepaper ermine tails.

Mother’s wedding gown, covered with embroidery and pearls and tiny satin roses, was the hidden treasure that I was constantly unpacking for another look. Actually, it was the only beautiful thing in the house.

Radio was a huge influence, to which I give credit for my strong imagination. Instead of doing school homework, I would be listening to Stella Dallas, Helen Trent, and my favorite, Helen Hayes, who led the glamorous New York life. In my imagination I dressed each of these soap opera ladies, designing for them all sorts of fancy clothes.

As kids we weren’t allowed to go to the movies except on Saturday afternoons, when some rough-and-tumble cowboy affair would scramble across the screen. I couldn’t have cared less; I was just itching to get back to the movies on a Saturday night instead and see Greta Garbo, Carole Lombard, and Gone with the Wind. Unfortunately, I never made it, and these movies remained totally unknown to me until the late 1950s, when I saw them in revival.

In later years, after-school jobs were part of my upbringing, which I enjoyed very much, as they paid me money that I promptly spent on something colorful and pretty at the local Woolworth’s five-and-dime. Shoveling long driveways of snow allowed me to indulge in elaborate gifts for my mother and sisters; I would shovel snow all day long just to get my frozen hands on some money to buy beautiful things. One time I bought the supplies to make a hat. It was a real dilly-a great big cabbage rose hung over the right eye, and all sorts of ribbons tied at the back of the neck. My mother nearly collapsed in shame when she saw it.

I was a newspaper delivery boy at twelve, and each morning got up at five thirty to pedal my bike around the neighborhood and collect five bucks at the end of a week. After the first month, I saved my money, slipped in to the city of Boston on my first trip, and bought a dress, which I thought was the most chic thing in town. It was black crepe and bias cut, and had three red hearts on the right shoulder. As usual, Mother nearly had a fit. Now I was buying her clothes. Her reply was, “Think what the neighbors will say!” These were famous last words with my mother and dad.

My family had a whispering thought that I’d be a priest. And all this attraction to feminine fashion didn’t help their hope. But what Irish Catholic family didn’t dream of its eldest son being a priest? I always knew I wasn’t priesthood material as I was sewing away from some devilish fire, flaming inside the deepest corners of my soul.

The paper route made life worthwhile, giving me the loot to indulge in a little fashion fantasy, and as fast as I’d buy the newest styles, Mother would return them. I would counteract with another dress or fake diamond bracelet. My next job was delivering clothes for Mr. Kaplan, the local tailor. This was the beginning of my understanding what made beautiful clothes. Here I learned all about the construction of coats and suits, the fine technique of pressing and shaping. I also earned more money, and my two sisters soon fell under my assault of buying clothes, always making secret trips to the city and visiting the fashionable stores. My favorite was Jays on Temple Place. The facade of the terra-cotta-colored building was decorated with silhouetted ladies sitting on French chairs, admiring themselves in the style of 1910. Inside, the smell of perfume and champagne and wall-to-wall carpet made me want to buy everything in sight. They had the best-looking shopping bags in Boston, with a silhouetted lady and the name Jays giving the carrier great distinction. Of course, I was proud as a peacock, carrying the package home to my middle-class neighborhood. (I was the worst snob in town.)

By the time I was twelve, the family was in a state of frenzy over how they could knock this artistic nature out of me. Finally, it was decided that a trade school, where my hands could be the learners, was the only solution for a safe future. I enrolled at Mechanic Arts High School, where I learned carpentry. My spindle-legged tables were a howling success and caused a great deal of hell-raising with the people who wanted plain, sturdy-legged tables. I just couldn’t resist putting the wood on a lathe and making all the fanciest turns I knew how. The classes were anything but fashionable. They consisted of sheet-metal work and a blacksmith’s shop where we had the best fun. What I couldn’t do with the blowtorch and anvil! Everything I made had curlicues and twists . . . I suppose you might call it Irish baroque. Along with all those shop classes came algebra, which I could never figure out, and history, which I was terrific at, from a costume point of view. I couldn’t recite a word of Shakespeare, but I could sure draw a costume for every character in the plays.

What made these school years livable was an after-school job at Jordan Marsh Company, the city’s largest department store. At two thirty I was out of the school prison, trotting down fashionable Boylston Street with more enthusiasm than I’d shown all day, observing all the windows of the most fashionable shops in Boston. A special delight was sizing up the august Beacon Hill dowagers who would be going to tea at the Ritz Hotel. I often dallied outside its doors just to get a glimpse of some fascinating women. Jordan Marsh was across the Boston Common, in the commercial section of town, surrounded by Filene’s and the other big stores that just swallowed me up. At Jordan’s I was a stock boy in the ready-to-wear departments, and had the time of my life pushing the big carts through the store. My favorite departments were better dresses, furs, and handbags. The store had an elegant quality that disappeared after my days there in the early 1940s. A grand stairway curved up through the central rotunda; mahogany showcases gave a proper Bostonian attitude to the high-ceilinged main floor.

I wasn’t there but a few weeks before I knew the best merchandise from the plain, everyday stuff. I was always finagling a deal, until I got to push the racks with the best dresses down to their department, where I carefully scrutinized every one I took off.

I would unload the stock truck of the handbag department like I was unveiling the emperor’s jewels, making sure I set the bag on the counter so customers felt they had just discovered something they had never seen before. If the salesgirls didn’t make a few sales during the performance, I was crushed. The store’s glove department didn’t interest me, but its buyer wore the most exciting hats. They were tall Lilly DachŽ turbans, the likes of which few Bostonian women had ever seen. They had a sense of drama. This buyer also wore the first silver foxes without legs, tails, and heads I had seen. It was a knockout when everyone else in Boston was cherishing all those legs, tails, and heads. As a matter of fact, for years they continued to wear it like that in Boston, and didn’t think of cutting them off.

My first six months’ salary went to buying a pair of these silver foxes for my mother. She hardly ever wore them, feeling they were too daring and showy.

At this time I started covering myself in outrageous bright shirts and ties. I bought the first fake-fur-lined trench coat with the biggest fur collar I could find, and nearly drove the family crazy with shame, wearing it on the first cool day of September. I just couldn’t wait to get it on my back and parade into school-although I almost fainted from the heat in the rush-hour crowd in the trolley car. Clothes were everything to me, and I think I spent seven days a week deciding what I’d wear the next week.

Life at Jordan’s was fabulous, and had they given diplomas, I would have graduated with honors. That said, I almost got canned at one point. It was during the parade at the end of the Second World War, and I felt the store should do something in the way of a big display. Of course, they had already hung the world’s largest American flag over the Washington Street facade of the building, which made Filene’s flag look like a postage stamp. But I thought I should add some of my own flair, so I went through all the men’s rooms in the store, taking the rolls of toilet tissue and stashing them up on the roof of the store, at the corner of Washington and Summer Streets, the busiest intersection in Boston, where the biggest crowd was sure to assemble. After collecting dozens and dozens of rolls, I began to unroll them over the heads of the marching soldiers. It was an instant success, as the white rolls whipped down in huge white streaks! The crowd below went wild with delight as the unrolled ends bounced off the heads of the cops. Within fifteen minutes the intersection was a blizzard of toilet paper, which became a spectacular tangled mess in all of Filene’s flagpoles-it took them months to unwind it. In my enthusiasm in creating a living display, I had completely blocked the window view of the store’s president, Mr. Mitton, which was right under where I was standing. I had hardly unrolled the last of the paper, when the hands of store detectives, executives, and Boston cops hauled me before the exasperated president.US

Additional information

Dimensions	0.7100 × 5.5300 × 8.1800 in
Imprint	Penguin Books
ISBN-13	09780525558729
ISBN-10	0525558721
Author	Hilton Als, Bill Cunningham
Audience	General / adult
BISAC	DES005000, PHO009000
Subjects	queer history, photographer gifts, fashion book, artist gifts, history of fashion, PHO009000, DES005000, memoirs, hats, costume, gift books, design books, new york city book, gay history, gifts for her, gay gifts, Bill Cunningham memoir, Bill Cunningham book, Bill Cunningham, hilton als, street fashion, design, Memoir, gender, bestseller, lgbt, art, New York, gifts for women, fashion, design book, biography, fashion books, fashion history, fashion design, vogue, anna wintour, alexander mcqueen, biographies, coffee table book, gifts for photographers