Bill Cunningham: New York, New York

Born in 1929 and raised in Massachusetts, Cunningham briefly attended Harvard University before moving to New York City to pursue a career as a milliner.  After designing hats for a number of years, and working with bespoke retailers Chez Ninon, Cunningham observed women’s fashion trends moving away from headwear.  With this in mind, he then made the prescient transition to journalism.  Working as a columnist for Women’s Wear Daily and as a New York based reporter for The Chicago Tribune in the mid 1960s, Cunningham began what became a lifelong career in fashion journalism.  At first writing columns, and then publishing photographs beginning in 1967, Cunningham spent most of his career working for The New York Times.  However, guarding his freedom as a freelancer close, (he frequently contributed to noted fashion magazines such as Vogue and Town & Country, and helped launch Details in 1982) he did not officially join the staff until 1994.  Cunningham stayed on at The Times until his death in 2016.

Cunningham’s life and work have been written about in numerous publications, and have been the subject of an award-winning documentary, Bill Cunningham New York (2010) as well as the recently released The Times of Bill Cunningham (2018).  Additionally, at the time of his death, Cunningham left behind the manuscript of an autobiography which he titled Fashion Climbing, which was published posthumously in 2018.  The Bill Cunningham Foundation was established to promote and support Cunningham’s photographs and legacy.