Doubling as a cartography of the ever-changing city, Bill Cunningham New York portrays the secluded pioneer of street fa | dG1fTThrSU5pRmhwbGM
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Short filmTranscript
00:00I've said many times that we all get dressed for Bill.
00:03Okay, this is Bill Cunningham on the street this week.
00:06There's no reason to be doom and gloom
00:08and think that fashion is finished.
00:10The best fashion show is definitely on the street.
00:13Always has been and always will be.
00:15We're all blank canvases when we get up in the morning
00:17and we paint ourselves.
00:19Street style emerged at the same point
00:21that Bill got a camera.
00:23He's been documenting me since I was a kid
00:26and it's one snap, two snaps,
00:27or he ignores you, which is death.
00:30Bill's fingerprints are all over everything he does
00:32because he's never, ever, ever sold out one inch of anything.
00:36Put her here and put her over here.
00:38Put it on. Stop your antics.
00:39Put it up there.
00:43Damn you, kids.
00:45I have the feeling that he doesn't sit down
00:47and talk to people too much.
00:49I have no idea about his private life.
00:50I have no idea if he's lonely.
00:52I once went to his studio. Have you been there?
00:54This is my clothes closet.
00:56Does he still sleep on the cabinets?
00:57Who the hell wants a kitchen and a bathroom?
00:59See, if you don't take money, they can't tell you what to do.
01:02That's the key to the whole thing.
01:05New York society becomes harder and harder to define.
01:09Bill is a true egalitarian.
01:10However, that doesn't mean he isn't aware
01:13of cultural vision and hierarchies.
01:15He just treats it all the same.
01:17I'm not interested in celebrities with their free dresses.
01:21I'm interested in clothes.
01:22I would come into a place and he would say,
01:24Oh, thank God you're here.
01:25Everybody here looks so boring.
01:27If we all went out looking like slobs like me,
01:30it would be a pretty dreary world.
01:33The wider world that perceives fashion as a frivolity
01:36that should be done away with,
01:38the point is that fashion is the armor
01:41to survive the reality of everyday life.
01:44I don't think you could do away with it.
01:45It would be like doing away with civilization.
01:47That's what I think.
01:55I'll be your mirror.
01:59I'll be your mirror.