If you haven’t heard of Bill Cunningham, just open any fashion magazine or fashion blog, and you will see his influence. A legend in his own right, the now 85-year-old Cunningham was one of the first people to ever photograph and chronicle street style, showing the world his belief that “the fashion show has always been on the street.”
While his wonderful photographs capturing the way real people wear fashion has been the main focus of Cunningham’s career for the last 35+ years and every Sunday in the New York Times Style section, a recent exhibit at the New-York Historical Society has brought another side of his photography into focus.
What began in 1968 as a project “just for fun” with his friend and fellow photographer, Editta Sherman, turned into a 9-year project celebrating the history of fashion and architecture in New York City. The two searched thrift stores and auctions for vintage clothing, photographing each historic look with architecture to match its era.
The exhibit was delightful to look at, showing not only fashion and architecture, but the authenticity that only exists in photographs taken between friends. Sherman, who died last year at 101, was the subject of many of the photographs on display, which only represented a small portion of the project. By the time it was completed in 1976, Cunningham had collected more than 500 outfits and had shot nearly two thousand N.Y. locations- a selection of which were released in his 1978 book, “Facades.”
While the photographs could be appreciated by anyone who enjoys fashion and architecture, what makes the pictures so profound has to do with the era in which they were taken. To put it simply, Cunningham and Sherman were finding beauty where others weren’t. N. Y. between the late Sixties and early Seventies was overrun with urban and economic issues, and architectural preservation wasn’t a priority.
By highlighting the historic buildings and fashions of those times, Cunningham drew attention to the idea of preservation, while also showing how much fashion and architecture interact and influence each other. A notable example, is a shot of Sherman in a fur pill-box hat in front of the Guggenheim museum, the hat playfully mirroring the museum’s iconic shape.
While the fashions featured in his photographs would be difficult to find in a thrift-store now, the architecture that they mirrored remains, importantly reminding New Yorkers and anyone else who cares of where N.Y. style began and how it evolved into what it is today.
If you missed the exhibit, which ran March 14th-June 15th, some of the collection can still be viewed online at www.nyhistory.org.
Article by Amelia Whitworth for FashionIQ