Fashion Climbing by Bill Cunningham

Author:Bill Cunningham [Bill Cunningham]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780525558705
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2018-09-05T00:00:00+00:00

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EACH MORNING WHEN I OPENED the New York papers, I turned first to the obituary page to see if any of my rich elderly customers had passed away. After all, my millinery business was made up mostly of the elderly matrons, as the young people weren’t wearing hats, and there were few enough of my customers left. Secondly, I turned to the society pages, where I followed the goings-on of fashionable women. Five nights a week I spent observing elegant women from the balconies of the ballrooms, my opera glasses trained on their chic clothes as I mentally rearranged them to what I thought best for the women’s individual types. Of course, I never had a ticket to any of these parties, but I soon learned all the back doors to the fashionable theaters, hotels, and restaurants. Today I can hardly find my way through the legitimate entrance of the Waldorf, but I could take you blindfolded through all the fire exits and kitchens leading to the ballroom. I remember when Queen Elizabeth was at the Waldorf, hundreds of cops were guarding the place, and I just had to get in to see all the glorious women. I was quite nervous about crashing, but by using all my secret doors, I made it to the projection room near the ballroom ceiling, where the spotlights threw shafts of light on the queen’s diamond tiara. I lay on the suspended catwalk seventy feet above the three hundred elegant guests, with my binoculars glued to my eyes.

Another time I wanted to see the most exclusive debutante presentation of the city, where no press or public were allowed. It was one of the August Assemblies. I arrived at the Plaza two hours before, and after glancing around the ballroom and seeing dozens of private cops stationed at the entrance door, I knew I’d never get back in, so I crawled under a table in the main dining room and sat for two hours. When feet started to surround the table, I figured I could emerge and blend in with the guests. I got a wonderful exclusive story for the newspaper.

Gate-crashing was part of my self-education in fashion. When there were three parties each night and I couldn’t see the elegant women on arrival—which is the best time to study all the clothes—I would take up the second best viewing point, which is outside the ladies’ lounge, and as soon as the cocktails were over, every girl in the room would start a fashion parade in and out, giving me a marvelous display of the clothes. This observing has been a full-time hobby, which has turned out to be the finest education in fashion I could ever have. I am seen so often at the hotels that many people think I work there.

One of the most memorable nights was a masked ball a year earlier, in 1949, at the Waldorf, when the most chic woman in New York, Mrs. Byron Foy, made her grand entrance sweeping across the ballroom floor.

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