Fashion designers -- United States -- Biography. |
Portrait photographers -- United States -- Biography. |
Millinery -- United States -- History. |
Cunningham, Bill, 1929-2016 |
Cunningham, William J. (William John), 1929-2016 |
Cunningham, William John, Jr., 1929-2016 |
Hat-making |
Hatmaking |
Available:
Library | Shelf Number | Shelf Location | Status |
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Searching... Dartmouth - Southworth | 746.92 CUN 2018 | NONFICTION | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Fairhaven-Millicent | B CUNNINGHAM (BIL) CUN 2018 | NONFICTION | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Foxboro - Boyden Library | B CUNNINGHAM | BIOGRAPHY | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Mansfield Public Library | 746.9 CUNNINGHAM | NONFICTION | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Mattapoisett Free Public Library | 746.92 CUN 2018 | NONFICTION | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Richards Memorial Library | 920 C917 | NONFICTION | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Summary
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.
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
The legendary New York Times photographer whose extraordinary eye captured high fashion and high society in his columns "On the Street" and "Evening Hours" turns his focus to his early years and early career in this surprising and sprightly posthumous memoir. Cunningham (1929-2016), who grew up in an Irish Catholic suburb of Depression-era Boston, recalls his first brush with fashion at age four when he donned his sister's pink organza party dress. Though reprimanded by his Boston-proper mother, the incident didn't deter him from a lifelong obsession with clothes and couture. After dropping out of Harvard at 19, Cunningham moved to New York, where he worked in carriage-trade retail and then struck out on his own as a high-end hat designer whose often outrageous millinery was inspired by fruit, fish, and fowl. His antics and adventures-hiding behind plants at a Chanel show or under a table at a debutante ball, sneaking into the Waldorf Astoria to glimpse Queen Elizabeth-give readers a front-row seat on the mid-century fashion world, and the black and white photos, many featuring a dapper, young Cunningham beaming ear to ear, document a fantastical bygone era. For all the book's frivolity, Cunningham is a truth teller in an artifice-draped world: he calls some of the customers who bought his hats "star-spangled bitches... full of conniving tricks to get the price as low as possible" and singles out Women's Wear Daily publisher John Fairchild as a fake who played favorites. 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. (Sept.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* 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. The seemingly eternally optimistic Cunningham was born in 1929 in a conservative Boston suburb, where holidays were his break from drab puritanical life, an occasion to catalog churchgoing ladies' elegance and to dress up himself. Doggedly devoted to an artistic life despite his family's disapproval, Cunningham nurtured his fashion interests working in department stores before dropping out of Harvard after one semester and moving to New York, where he began making hats as William J. (to minimize his family's offense). Ensuing decades find him designing, hobnobbing, even serving in the army abroad for a stint (a wonderfully broadening experience), and always, always observing. It only adds to the book's richness that, though a scattering of uncaptioned photos adorn its pages, it ends before Cunningham really began his career as a fashion photographer what he's most known for and the focus of a documentary film about him. Rather, 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.--Annie Bostrom Copyright 2018 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
21 LESSONS FOR THE 21ST CENTURY, by Yuval Noah Harari. (Spiegel & Grau, $28.) This sweeping survey of the modern world by an ambitious and stimulating thinker offers a framework for confronting the fears raised by such major issues as nationalism, immigration, education and religion. PRESIDIO, by Randy Kennedy. (Touchstone, $26.) Vintage Texas noir, this first novel follows the flight to the Mexican border of a car thief turned accidental kidnapper. BOOM TOWN: The Fantastical Saga of Oklahoma City, Its Chaotic Founding, Its Apocalyptic Weather, Its Purloined Basketball Team, and the Dream of Becoming a World-Class Metropolis, by Sam Anderson. (Crown, $28.) A vivid, slightly surreal history of "the great minor city of America," starting 500 million years ago and continuing up through Timothy McVeigh, Kevin Durant and the Flaming Lips. FASHION CLIMBING: A Memoir With Photographs, by Bill Cunningham. (Penguin Press, $27.) Discovered after his death, these autobiobraphical essays chart the beloved New York Times photographer's early career as a milliner, fashion reporter and discerning observer of high society. SMALL SMALL FRY, by Lisa Brennan-Jobs. (Grove, $26.) BrenFUY nan-Jobs's memoir of an unstable childhood at the mercy of her depressed, volatile and chronically impoverished mother, on the one hand, and her famous, wealthy and emotionally abusive father, on the other, is a luminous, if deeply disturbing, work of art. CHERRY, by Nico Walker. (Knopf, $26.95.) The incarcerated novelist's debut is a singular portrait of the opioid epidemic and the United States' failure to provide adequate support to veterans. It's full of slapstick comedy, despite gut-clenching depictions of dope sickness, the futility of war and PTSD. OPEN ME, by Lisa Locascio. (Grove, $25.) This debut novel by a lovely, imagistic writer is a subversion of the study-abroad narrative: Instead of being transformed by the external world in Denmark, the narrator dives inward, spending her days discovering the possibilities of her own pleasure. TERRARIUM: New and Selected Stories, by Valerie Trueblood. (Counterpoint, $26.) Urgent, unnerving and tightly packed short fiction that covers enough ground for a library of novels. BUT NOT THE ARMADILLO, written and illustrated by Sandra Boynton. (Simon & Schuster, $5.99; ages 0 to 4.) Boynton's new board book, a follow-up to "But Not the Hippopotamus," stars another creature who'd rather not join in. Some folks just prefer to go their own way - toddlers will understand. The full reviews of these and other recent books are on the web: nytimes.com/books
Kirkus Review
A posthumous memoir encapsulates the momentous life of an eccentric fashion icon.Though he was known as the man who walked the streets of New York with a camera in hand, capturing the idiosyncratic fashion of the city's citizens, Cunningham (1929-2016) grew up in a "middle-class Catholic home in a lace-curtain Irish suburb of Boston." To the horror of his parents, fashion fascinated Cunninghamhe would secretly put on his sister's dressesand he refused to give in to the expectations his family had with regard to what he should pursue, both personally and professionally. "I never go down the street or enter a room without automatically deciding what the woman should wear," he writes. "It's probably the reason for the heavy development of my eye toward fashion." As a late teen, Cunningham left for New York, officially anchoring himself in the city that would become his life fuel. He started working as a hat maker, serving some of the city's elite, and eventually opened up his own store. This was 1950s New York, when the love of haute couture and excess was praised above the opposing rising bohemian values. "Designing a fashion collection," writes the author, "is like growing antennas that reach high into the unknown and hopefully higher than any other designer's. It's a long time growing them till inspiration begins to tickle and outrates that of your competitors. With each new collection my antennas grew longer, starting in 1948, and reaching their highest by 1960." In addition to the charming narrative, the book features photographs of some of the author's designs and social sphere, and he offers readers a reminder that characters like him still might roam NYC streets. Cunningham's writing is authentic, irreverent, and quintessentially New Yorkeven though he made numerous jaunts to foreign countries to visit the fashion capitals of the world.A lively tale of a life in style and a delightful homage to the days before women stopped wearing hats. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
Before Cunningham (1929-2016) was a photographer and a "living landmark," he wanted nothing more than to create fanciful hats and observe what chic New York ladies were wearing. In the days of outlandish headwear, his milliner's antennae reached further than most, to octopus shapes and floor-length fringe. Crashing elegant parties and designer shows in the 1950s and 1960s served as his self-education in fashion. In this posthumous memoir (affectionately prefaced by Hilton Als), Cunningham recounts formative years as a style obsessive misunderstood by his conservative family. After dropping out of Harvard and moving to New York City, he sells eccentric hats as "William J." and sees Europe in the army. In a distinctive voice that rasps off the page, he tells delightful stories of impoverished creative types decorating before a party, improvising a dress from a shower curtain, or hiding under a table to glimpse a fashion show: "These were wonderful wild days, when fashion was all we ate and drank." As the title suggests, Cunningham cattily observes how for some, fashion is social climbing, for others the pure love of beautiful things. -VERDICT This madcap insider account of the mid-20th-century fashion world is a gift for fans of Cunningham's -photography.-Lindsay King, Yale Univ. Libs, New Haven, CT © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.