Bill Cunningham Looked Past the Runway to Capture Modern Identity
This is the age canada goose outlet cheap canada goose uk sale of street style, canada goose black friday sale an era when we talk about “the show outside the show”: buy canada goose jacket cheap the people who dress to be photographed by the growing hordes of snappers on the sidewalk waiting to capture canada goose outlet canada Canada Goose Outlet the ever more exaggerated fashions necessary to stand out from the peacocking crowd and bestow upon them their 15 minutes, or canada goose outlet seconds, of fame. Go to any fashion show and you can canada goose outlet uk sale see it: a woman or man in a colorful, canada goose outlet canada goose clearance online uk kooky get up, swarmed by photographers jostling for the best shot and calling, “Look canada goose outlet shop over here!” and, “Who are you wearing?” lemmings in the land of the look at me.
But Canada Goose Parka Bill Cunningham, who canada goose factory outlet canada goose began it all, was never among them.
Since his death on Saturday, many of the memorials and the hagiographies that have poured out over the internet have dubbed Bill (I can’t call him Mr. Cunningham, as I’ve known him, and been squeezed up next to him on fashion show benches, for too long) the father of street style, and rightly so. Still, a more accurate way to think of him might be canada goose outlet toronto factory as someone who applied the tenets of visual journalism to fashion.
He began his career as a reporter, after all, and his photographs were simply another expression of the same discipline: They weren’t filtered, uk canada goose outlet airbrushed or staged.
He was among the goose outlet canada first to recognize the canada goose coats on sale value of observing what people wore in their everyday life, and to understand that it was a reflection of identity and culture, a means of communication canada goose black friday sale used by all, and thus a crucial historical record. “The Sartorialist,” or Tommy canadian goose jacket Ton, or Phil Oh, there was Bill, riding canada goose clearance sale his bicycle, reporting on what he saw: the Canada Goose Online idiosyncratic and the ubiquitous, but above all, the honest.
His subject was not what was manufactured to catch his Canada Goose online eye, but what people wore to feel part of the group, or to stand out from the Canada Goose Jackets group, or to otherwise canada goose outlet nyc telegraph their place in the world be it at a high society charity ball or at a cheap Canada Goose canada goose outlet reviews popular shopping street corner, no matter. Anna Wintour, the editor of Vogue, has often been quoted as saying, “We all dressed for Bill.” It’s a lovely and genuine sentiment both fashion and society are peppered by women whose dream was to be photographed by Bill, and canada goose outlet jackets having canada goose uk black friday him take your picture became a much coveted seal of approval but the truth is, he wouldn’t have wanted anyone to dress for him. He wanted to understand and record how they dressed for themselves.
He taught me (his pictures taught me) that while what was on the catwalks was interesting, it was what happened to the clothes afterward how they were used, or not used that really mattered. It wasn’t that he rejected fashion; he loved it, with a never canada goose outlet in usa ending enthusiasm for discovery. But he understood canada goose outlet black friday that its power was personal. Clothes are the front line of communication; they are the first thing we say about ourselves to canada goose factory sale each other, and the first judgment we make in turn. canada goose outlet store uk That was his story. And it is why his canada goose outlet new york city videos canada goose outlet online and columns were so obsessively interesting.
Newsletter Sign Up
Continue reading the main story
Harold canada goose uk outlet Koda, the former head of the Costume Institute of canada goose coats the buy canada goose jacket Metropolitan canada Canada Goose sale goose jacket outlet canada goose clearance Museum of Art, once told me that the debate over whether fashion belonged in the museum had been resolved when the powers that be started seeing fashion as a decorative official canada goose outlet art that represented popular attitudes and mores canada goose outlet uk toward beauty, craft and society at a specific moment in time. This belief also drove Bill, whose thousands of pictures now comprise an invaluable portrait of popular identity in the late 20th and canada goose store early 21st centuries. They recorded the casualization of life, the rise of the cause ribbon, the advent canada goose outlet store of the “It” bag and the problem of global warming (What the hell https://www.getcanadagooseoutlet.ca do you wear when it’s summer in January and snowing in April?).
Street style has become an increasingly ersatz game, less about unique and the revelatory than marketing, with brands shipping clothes to popular stars to wear uk canada goose in theoretically un styled shots clothes they have not chosen, mind you, but been given (or even paid to wear). In the same way canada goose outlet parka that the red carpet has become canada goose uk shop an advertising vehicle, so, too, have many sidewalks. Bill represented the truth Canada Goose Coats On Sale behind all of that.