"At age 87, Bill Cunningham was still cycling around New York, refusing my offer to share a taxi, even when it snowed," wrote Vogueinternational editor Suzy Menkes on Instagram. "I shall miss him so. As will the fashion world which has lost an honest and true reporter worthy of the New York Timeswhere his work was cherished. May he rest in peace, but his incomparable record of changing styles last forever."
Cunningham was the pioneer of "fashion on the street", as he coined it, since he started documenting fashion lovers, commuters and everyone around him for esteemed publications such as Details, Women's Wear Daily, and The New York Times. His fashion career started in the late Forties when he moved to New York and became a milliner, working under the name William J, although his life in the city was interrupted when he was conscripted to the American army in the early Fifties. He returned in 1953 and picked up a job in fashion photography job at WWD, documenting what would become his calling card: an unbiased and independent eye for what was happening around him.
Cunningham - who rode his bicycle around his adopted home-town of New York to capture the prevailing trends, dressed in his signature blue French worker jackets in warmer months; a grey, hooded anorak and flat cap when it was cold; and a black DIY poncho when it rained - was famous for his decorum. As Annette de la Renta put it, "He never took a cruel picture." He was a man interested only in celebrating differences in fashion, not exposing them in a negative way.
He famously never took a pay check for the work he delivered, saying that if he wasn't on a publication's payroll, then his vision would not be compromised. Instead, he discovered it - day in, day out - for himself and reported it to the world.
"Money is the cheapest thing," he was heard saying in the 2010 documentary Bill Cunningham New York, which followed him for a lengthy period in 2008. "Liberty and freedom is the most expensive."
He travelled annually to Paris for the international collections, maintaining his same humble, unassuming, un-attention grabbing demeanour, spurning "cookie-cutter sameness", as he put, for originality in its many forms.
When he was awarded France's Légion d'Honneur in 2008, making him an officer in the order of arts and literature, he told the crowd: "I'm not in it for the celebrities in their free dresses. Look at the clothes, the art, the cut, the new cut, the inspiration, the cloths - that's everything. It's the clothes, not the celebrity and not the spectacle."
The 2010 documentary gratefully brought his brilliance to the masses, but even with the extended fame that it generated, he was deferential to its merits.
"Mr. Cunningham told nearly anyone who asked about it that the attendant publicity was a total hassle, a reason for strangers to approach and bother him,"reports The New York Times. "He wanted to find subjects, not be the subject. He wanted to observe, rather than be observed. Asceticism was a hallmark of his brand."
Nevertheless, Cunningham fed off and encouraged the creativity around him. His insistence to "give the reader what they want", was unwavering for his column in the NYT. "I let the street speak to me - in order for it to speak to you, you need to stay out and see what it is. There are no shortcuts, believe me!" he said.
"It's not work, it's pleasure," he was often heard saying to anyone who congratulated him on his career. It's some comfort to his legions of admirers, that he lived to the end doing what he loved.
Cunningham - who rode his bicycle around his adopted home-town of New York to capture the prevailing trends, dressed in his signature blue French worker jackets in warmer months; a grey, hooded anorak and flat cap when it was cold; and a black DIY poncho when it rained - was famous for his decorum. As Annette de la Renta put it, "He never took a cruel picture." He was a man interested only in celebrating differences in fashion, not exposing them in a negative way.
He famously never took a pay check for the work he delivered, saying that if he wasn't on a publication's payroll, then his vision would not be compromised. Instead, he discovered it - day in, day out - for himself and reported it to the world.
"Money is the cheapest thing," he was heard saying in the 2010 documentary Bill Cunningham New York, which followed him for a lengthy period in 2008. "Liberty and freedom is the most expensive."
He travelled annually to Paris for the international collections, maintaining his same humble, unassuming, un-attention grabbing demeanour, spurning "cookie-cutter sameness", as he put, for originality in its many forms.
When he was awarded France's Légion d'Honneur in 2008, making him an officer in the order of arts and literature, he told the crowd: "I'm not in it for the celebrities in their free dresses. Look at the clothes, the art, the cut, the new cut, the inspiration, the cloths - that's everything. It's the clothes, not the celebrity and not the spectacle."
The 2010 documentary gratefully brought his brilliance to the masses, but even with the extended fame that it generated, he was deferential to its merits.
"Mr. Cunningham told nearly anyone who asked about it that the attendant publicity was a total hassle, a reason for strangers to approach and bother him,"reports The New York Times. "He wanted to find subjects, not be the subject. He wanted to observe, rather than be observed. Asceticism was a hallmark of his brand."
Nevertheless, Cunningham fed off and encouraged the creativity around him. His insistence to "give the reader what they want", was unwavering for his column in the NYT. "I let the street speak to me - in order for it to speak to you, you need to stay out and see what it is. There are no shortcuts, believe me!" he said.
"It's not work, it's pleasure," he was often heard saying to anyone who congratulated him on his career. It's some comfort to his legions of admirers, that he lived to the end doing what he loved.
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