Fashion Climbing

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, RookieThe 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. – Horatia Harrod * 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”. – Lauren Sarazen * 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, VogueAs 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 – Sophie Jean-Louis Constantine * 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 – Simon Doonan * 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 – Dwight Garner * The New York Times *Cunningham’s memoir is a charming ode to being true to oneself * NPR *

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.

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