Hunt: Bill Cunningham's life was a life lesson on how not to be compromised by money
"Money is the cheapest thing. Liberty and freedom is the most expensive.” This was the considered opinion of the late Bill Cunningham, for much of his career a fashion photographer for the New York Times. He was eccentric. He lived in a room in Carnegie Hall, one of the studios set aside for artists to make the city affordable for them. The room was tiny with a bath down the hall. The last of the tenants were forced out in 2010 to make room for offices, and he moved to an apartment.
His beat was not only photographing people at charity balls and on the runways of the great design houses but street fashion. He considered them all of equal value. If anything, street fashion was more important: “The best fashion show is always on the street. Always has been. Always will be.”
He learned the importance of “liberty and freedom” early. He began his career as a hat designer, and he wanted his own shop. In 1951 he borrowed money from Rebekah Harkness, a wealthy New Yorker. As he remembers it wasn’t a lot, maybe $1,000. Then he was drafted into the military. He was forced to close his hat shop, but Harkness thought he should get out of the draft so he could continue the business and pay her back. He could not imagine why any good American would find it acceptable to dodge the draft. Wasn’t this his duty as a citizen?
She hounded him and his relatives and even wanted to garnish his Army wages, which he said were about $90 a month and would have taken him years to pay back. So an aunt and uncle paid her, and he eventually repaid them for the loan.
Nothing was more important to him than his integrity. When Women’s Wear Daily used his fashion-on-the-street photos to ridicule the people in his pictures, he was incensed. He refused ever to work for WWD again despite its status as the top publication in the industry. As a career move, this was borderline suicidal. It worked out eventually, but he had no way of knowing it would.
He rode a bicycle around New York and, no fashion plate himself, wore a French workmans’ blue jacket, used by street sweepers, because it would hold film and the fabric was durable.
The New York Times gave him the freedom to do pretty much as he pleased, but his independence was hard won. “I just try to play a straight game, and in New York, that is almost impossible. To be honest and straight in New York, that’s like Don Quixote fighting windmills.” When he covered charity galas, he would not even accept a glass of water. He ate before he arrived.
“You see, if you don’t take money, they can’t tell you what to do, kid. That’s the key to the whole thing. Don’t touch money. That's the worst thing you can do.”
Few people can live like Bill Cunningham. He never married, and lived on as little as any human being possibly could. He had only himself to support. His fierce independence was well known. He was so respected that the French culture ministry made him an Officer in the Order of Arts and Letters.
He was as much a cultural historian as he was a fashion photographer. When a designer would copy a design from the past, he would publish side-by-side photos of the earlier garment with the current stolen one. Gotcha. He spotted trends before anyone knew they were trends. He was brilliant.
We have had revelations about Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas being given lavish vacations by eccentric billionaire and collector of Nazi memorabilia Harlan Crow. All of Crow’s defenders, it turns out, have benefitted at least indirectly (though think tanks and publications) from his largess.
Our political system is designed to give the rich enormous opportunities to use their wealth to “support” politicians they like, and Bill Cunninham was right: “If you don’t take the money, they can’t tell you what to do.”
A lot of people would rather have the money. And the position.
This isn’t just politicians or New York or the fashion industry.
I think what Clarence Thomas did was, at the very least, unethical and corrupt. An abomination.
But this isn’t a problem limited to the rich and powerful, although their manipulations are of an order of magnitude greater. It is a problem even us ordinary people can encounter at work or in a family. And the fact that we have such a high tolerance for it in our political system affects us all.
But if you want to learn about the life of one resister, see the documentary “Bill Cunningham New York,” available streaming. I have little interest in fashion, but it is riveting.
This article originally appeared on Staunton News Leader: Patricia Hunt: Bill Cunningham's NYC life was a lesson on not compromising for money
