An enchanting memoir by the legendary New York Times fashion photographer Bill Cunningham
*A Financial Times Book of the Year 2018*
*The New York Times Bestseller*
'I took to New York life like a star shooting through the heavens...'
Bill Cunningham's first love was fashion but the big city came a close second. He left for New York aged nineteen, losing his family's support but enjoying the infinite luxury of freedom. Living on a scoop of Ovaltine a day, he would run down to Fifth Avenue to feed on the spectacular sights of the window displays - then run back to his tiny studio to work all night.
Working as 'William J' (to spare his parents' blushes), Bill became one of the most celebrated hat designers of the 1950s, creating elegant town hats for movie stars and playful beach hats for the summer set. Bill's mission was to bring happiness by making beautiful things - even if it meant pawning his bike to fund fancy-dress outfits for all his friends.
When women stopped wearing hats and his business was forced to close, Bill worked as a fashion journalist, touring the couture houses of Europe. But New York remained his home, and it was as a street photographer of the fashions of the city that he became well known, in a job that would last almost forty years.
Fashion Climbing is the enchanting memoir he left behind, capturing the madcap times of his early career and the fashion scene of the mid-century.
Written with the spark and wit of Holly Golightly, and brimming over with Bill's infectious joy for life, it is a gift to all who seek beauty, whatever our style or status.
An enchanting memoir by the legendary New York Times fashion photographer Bill Cunningham
*A Financial Times Book of the Year 2018*
*The New York Times Bestseller*
'I took to New York life like a star shooting through the heavens...'
Bill Cunningham's first love was fashion but the big city came a close second. He left for New York aged nineteen, losing his family's support but enjoying the infinite luxury of freedom. Living on a scoop of Ovaltine a day, he would run down to Fifth Avenue to feed on the spectacular sights of the window displays - then run back to his tiny studio to work all night.
Working as 'William J' (to spare his parents' blushes), Bill became one of the most celebrated hat designers of the 1950s, creating elegant town hats for movie stars and playful beach hats for the summer set. Bill's mission was to bring happiness by making beautiful things - even if it meant pawning his bike to fund fancy-dress outfits for all his friends.
When women stopped wearing hats and his business was forced to close, Bill worked as a fashion journalist, touring the couture houses of Europe. But New York remained his home, and it was as a street photographer of the fashions of the city that he became well known, in a job that would last almost forty years.
Fashion Climbing is the enchanting memoir he left behind, capturing the madcap times of his early career and the fashion scene of the mid-century.
Written with the spark and wit of Holly Golightly, and brimming over with Bill's infectious joy for life, it is a gift to all who seek beauty, whatever our style or status.
An enchanting memoir, as vibrant and charming as Breakfast at Tiffany's -- by the legendary New York Times fashion photographer Bill Cunningham
Born in 1929 in an Irish suburb of Boston, Bill Cunningham dropped
out of Harvard and moved to New York City to pursue a career in
fashion. In 1948, he started his hat design business, 'William J' ;
his hats were featured in Vogue and Harper's Bazaar and worn by
Marilyn Monroe and Jacqueline Kennedy. In the 1960s the business
closed and he became a fashion journalist and photographer.
In 1978, he joined the New York Times. In later years, Cunningham
could regularly be seen on his bicycle, in his French workman's
jacket, photographing fashion trends for his columns 'On the
Street' and 'Evening Hours'. He was the subject of the acclaimed
documentary Bill Cunningham, New York (2010) in which Anna Wintour
confided that 'we all dress for Bill'.
Bill Cunningham died in 2016, aged 87. He had always lived
modestly, amidst 'William J' hatboxes and the filing cabinets
housing his photographic archive. The prepared typescript of
Fashion Climbing was found among his effects.
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 Gevinson, Editor in Chief, Rookie*
The New York Times’s beloved street-style photographer died two
years ago, leaving behind a delightful memoir of his early years,
which tells of his escape from restrictive middle-class Boston to a
Manhattan career as a milliner. His love of beauty may not have
made him rich — he chose an ascetic existence — but it sustained
him for a lifetime.
*Financial Times, *Books of the Years**
Peppered with delightful colloquialisms...the text bears the
signature voice that endeared him to readers... Yet, despite an
ample dose of whimsy, there’s also a backbone to this cosy
memoir... Fashion Climbing celebrates one of the industry’s
fiercest advocates of sartorial joie de vivre, who established
himself on the fashion ladder “not with refined dignity but with an
angry howl”.
*AnOther Magazine*
Fashion Climbing is the captivating glimpse through the keyhole of
this dizzying, dazzling world, and captures the buzz and bluster of
a fashion life lived to the full
*Red Magazine*
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, International Editor at Large, Vogue*
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*
A thing of beauty ... Full of acerbic wit, and a Holly Golightly
tone
*Elle*
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... I can only hope there’s another installment
lurking in his archives to give us further insights into the
much-missed Bill
*New York Times Book Review*
An unexpected gift... Behind the boyish enthusiasm and
well-scrubbed good looks, he could be a cool observer of the
passing scene
*The New York Times*
Cunningham's memoir is a charming ode to being true to oneself
*NPR*
Enjoy the glorious, glamorous ride
*Independent*
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*
Fashion Climbing… [is] a fascinating portrait of the changing world
of fashion as seen by someone at its centre
*Monocle*
Surprising and sprightly... A front-row seat on the mid-century
fashion world... 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*
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