Fashion Climbing

by Bill Cunningham

  Although, I was often ripping mad at the inaccuracies of the press. Many times I couldn’t figure out what they were trying to describe, and what really got my dander up were the big spreads they would give to their favorites, who often showed the same old thing year after year. After each showing I would feel a deep depression, a sort of wrung-through-the-wringer feeling, and the harsh reality of the buyers demanding changes, and never buying the most creative designs, didn’t help. Of course Mrs. Nielsen was always there to cheer me up and give encouragement. Each morning Mrs. Nielsen would stop at Saint Patrick’s on her way to work and say a few prayers. Sometimes she’d filch some holy water and sprinkle it around the shop. I’m sure this helped us through a lot of tough spots.

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  I LIVED IN THE BACK ROOM, where we sewed and designed the hats. Each night before going to sleep I had the task of trying to find the bed buried beneath the piles of hats. Business grew, and any money made went right back into the shop. I never believed in spending any money on myself, until all the bills were paid. In my first four years, I was thrown out of seven banks for passing checks without money to cover them. I would issue the checks, always figuring that I could cover the amount in time, but the workings of banks and my bad business sense were a tragedy, which luckily never bothered me, so long as everyone got paid in the end. (One of the first people I hired, when I could afford it, was an accountant, who kept me out of trouble ever since.)

  Summers are the worst time for the millinery business, as in May, June, July, and August you don’t see a customer for weeks on end. I was always working in a restaurant trying to make ends meet and get free dinners. Mrs. Nielsen was often putting cardboard soles in my shoes to block up the big holes. She would cut out the heavy cardboard that the fragile veilings came wrapped on.

  The summer of 1955 saw a good change, though. A pleated veil hat design saved the season and made the shop enough money to create the fall collection. My girlfriend at the time, Estelle Naughton, who worked at Glamour, showed her editors the new hat idea, and they put it prominently in the May issue and sent lots of advertising to all their accounts. It was a real invention, and it continually made money for eight years. The fabric was twenty-eight-cents-a-yard black nylon net from Macy’s, which we pleated. It was totally collapsible and opened up to the size of a big-brimmed Asian hat. It sold for $10.95, which was a staggering profit, and we sold hundreds of them. If I’d been a shrewd businessman, I would have started manufacturing them.

  The second year I didn’t want to make it, as I thought it was dishonest to repeat, but my friend Mrs. Mack threatened to have it copied elsewhere if I wouldn’t remake it for her. Thus we repeated it every season.

  The next commercial—and artistic—successes were the amusing beach hats. I could let my mind go when I made them, as I didn’t have to worry about a bunch of stuffy old ladies complaining about matching their coats and suits. One beach hat that brought the shop great publicity was a huge umbrella-size straw brim with long celluloid fringe sewn around the brim edge, hanging to the floor. The idea came because I can’t stand the sun, and I thought it would make a wonderful portable beach cabana. At any rate, Look magazine gave it three full pages in color. I doubt if many people ever wore it on the beach except for a gag, but it was the hottest-selling party hat. People wore it to costume parties, always winning first prize. One year, two friends and I wore it in all black, to the Beaux-Arts ball. We were supposed to be the three witches from Macbeth. Much to our surprise we won the five-hundred-dollar first prize. Each year my beach hats became more successful. To design these was sheer pleasure. One year they were in the shape and colors of apples, oranges, pears, and carrots, and a slice of watermelon. Another year, they caused a riot of fun on the beaches of America and Europe in the shape of fish. And another time they were all in the shape of seashells—one got so big that I had to fill the bathtub with water to soak the straw, and then mold and twist it into the shape of a conch shell, and another into a giant head-covering clam. Unfortunately, they didn’t sell widely, as they were twenty-five to thirty-five dollars, and even at that price there wasn’t much profit in them. So copy houses that were able to make bad imitations by the thousands reaped all the profits. (One time a famous Italian designer used my fish hat a year later calling it his own, and I must say I was very flattered to see my influence coming back from Europe.)

  In the winter I made snow hats for the skiers and ice skaters. One collection was a sensation, and made lots of money and was widely copied. The hats were in the shape of animals, with darling felt faces pasted on the back: lions with manes of wool yarn, owls looking very wise with pearl monocles, and elephants and poodles. But the best of all was a simple little pussycat hat in white fur-like material with feathered whiskers and the most seductive blue eyes you’ve ever seen. I’ll bet we sold five hundred the first year at sixteen dollars each. The magazines gave them wide coverage, and the following year the children’s market adorned the heads of tiny tots from coast to coast with copies. I remember showing them to the Macy’s buyer, who threw me out of the office, saying the idea was ridiculous. This is why I never trusted the opinions of the so-called pros, as most of them don’t know a good idea until it sells.

  Another time I showed spring hats with flowers growing right up out of the head. The buyers screamed, “Ridiculous! Prostituting your talent!” and walked out of the shop. A month later they saw the same idea at the top house in Paris. I still have their frantic telegrams, telling me to rush a dozen of my so-called ridiculous ideas to their stores. This has been one of the difficulties in designing in America. Buyers and press often won’t recognize a new idea at a smaller house; they’ll label it a freak—until they see it copied by a big-name designer. Then they go into their swooning act over how marvelous it all is, seldom remembering the unknown originator. This is quite heartbreaking, especially the fickleness of the press.

  Commercial design yielded terrific business. My first big order came from an advertising firm. They wanted 150 identical beach hats, which they sent to their clients to promote one of their products. The hat was an uninhibited affair, a deep cone of straw painted blush pink, with a glamorous face of felt decorating the front that had a real cigarette glued onto the lips, a long crystal drop earring, and a mop of pink feathers for hair, which flipped open and formed a carryall. It was a much-publicized hat, and caused a sensation for the advertising company. American Cyanamid was the next big account. Its chemical division had developed a paper that they wanted to use in fashion. I was chosen to create hats with their new paper fabric. It seems Lilly Daché was first given the commission but wanted five hundred dollars a hat, and the conservative Cyanamid Company balked, and someone mentioned William J. We consummated a deal for seventy-five bucks a hat. They ordered several hundred hats over a three-year period. It was terrific—no fitting, just make ’em and ship ’em out—better than blue-chip stocks!

  American Airlines used one of my most fabulous feather hats in a national ad, but after taking the photo and printing it in full-page newspaper ads all over the country, they refused to pay. They said the deal was with the photographer, who had borrowed the hat from me under the pretext of using it for test shots of a model friend of mine. At any rate, they wouldn’t even pay for the hat that they used in the full-page ad. I thought it was a dirty way to do business, and I was surprised. But that’s business—you have to take the good with the bad. Luckily the ethical businesspeople far outnumber the cheats—at least that’s what I keep telling myself. This is why every designer should have a hardheaded business associate on hand the second the doors to the business are opened. The downfall of most designers is bad management. Designing is only 30 percent of the job, no matter what your aesthetic friends might tell you.

  My first big retail account was Macy’s, who sold hats by the gross. I wish I could have worked with them, but the price had to be around $25 retail, and that meant $12.50 for me. It was impossible for
a handmade hat to stay at this price. You needed a factory where machines turned out hats by the dozens. Wholesale is a competitive business, never meant for hand labor. The whole way of American life is based on wholesale, and small custom operations are a true luxury. How they survive is a testimony to the hard work and determination of their owners. Of course, small shops give human nature freedom to express a personal message, which is rare in a big wholesale operation. It’s even getting rarer to find customers who understand the individual statements of fashion put out in the form of two collections a year by the custom houses; but a new cycle is starting, and the status will be the great individualism. Fashion is in for an era of self-expression.

  During the 1950s my business increased, and by 1956 five sewers were stitching up a storm in the workroom. Of course they didn’t work year-round. For all practical purposes, it’s a six-month business: September, October, November . . . February, March, and April. With all the increase of business, my serious hats were never really widely accepted. The trouble seemed to be that they were two or three years in advance of their time, and people just weren’t ready for the ideas. Often customers who knew me well would buy the new designs, putting them away for a year or so and then wearing them. Timing is one of the most important ingredients of design. It’s exactly like the Wall Street stock market. Dress designer Norman Norell had the most perfect timing of all. He knew just when the public was ready to accept a new idea. I observed him for a long period of time, and this is one of his main contributions to fashion. To me, I never gave a damn for timing, or really understood what it meant. As a matter of fact, I delighted in shocking people with advanced ideas. This definitely wasn’t good for business.

  In July ’56 I was about to give my fall showing, and I had the feeling it was going to be one of my best. The out-of-town press were going to be in New York at the same time, and they had never seen my work. I tried to schedule a showing with the leader of their group, Eleanor Lambert, a New York publicity woman who incidentally wrote a newspaper column on the side. At any rate, Eleanor informed me that there was no room for my showing, that only the big houses were allowed time. This made me so mad I decided somehow I was going to show. After all, this was America, and freedom prevails. It’s funny how you get so patriotic when someone steps on you.

  Two weeks before the showing, I looked over the fashion calendar, and every single hour of the day was taken; only from midnight until seven the following morning was free. I saw where the two hundred out-of-town press ladies would be guests at the new play My Fair Lady, hosted by one of the rich manufacturers, so I decided that was the hour—I set my show for midnight, after the theater. Well, it caused a storm of protest, and if you’ve ever imagined throwing a monkey wrench into the grinding gears, this was it. Eleanor Lambert had a fit, as I also announced that the cast of My Fair Lady would be present, and the out-of-town press would have a chance to meet the stars. There was hysteria over the musical those first few months, so you can imagine the industry’s fury. They just didn’t know what the hell to do. This nobody William J. was causing a sensation; everyone wanted to come. Donna Cannon, who helped me with my showings by making pictures and releases, nearly died. Everyone had feared Miss Lambert, and I had taken the bull by the horns in going ahead with my elaborate plans. Five hundred people requested invitations, for a shop that held 125 people not too comfortably. As for the cast of My Fair Lady, three or four of the cast were my closest friends, and they had asked Rex Harrison and Julie Andrews and the other stars if they’d like to come to the show. They all accepted. I had finished designing the collection, and I could feel it was one of my best, so I invited all five hundred people to the show.

  Two days before the showing, I started clearing all the rooms. The landlady wouldn’t let me put anything in her back garden, and there were no storage rooms, so I brought yards and yards of heavy clothesline rope and hung all the furniture—worktables, chairs, and my bed—out the back windows of the house. The Museum of Modern Art was only two doors away, and for all anyone knew, this was just another mobile—pop art ahead of its time.

  When the rooms were empty, I saw how ugly the walls really were, so I decorated using the theme of my collection, the Enchanted Forest, and rushed down to the big flower market and bought huge crates of smilax, the stuff I remembered hanging all over the ballrooms of the debutante weddings and parties. I also bought all kinds of exotic tropical foliage, which sprouted out of the walls from cardboard florist containers we had nailed high on the door arches. We then bought hundreds of live orchids and hung them among the greens that covered every inch of the walls and ceilings. I then went to the Museum of Natural History and rented a dozen stuffed rare birds, which I suspended on invisible wires and perched in the chandelier. In the front entrance room, I placed a stone fountain with a plump cherub holding a dolphin that spit water. Outside the house, on the eight steps of the stoop, were massed tall palm branches. The two six-foot-tall red peacocks from the Christmas decor and a gold-sprinkled red carpet that ran from the street curb up the stairs and through the rooms added to the glitter. A friend stood at the door dressed as a maharaja in a huge turban of draped lamé. I had been able to fit two hundred red-and-gold folding chairs into the empty rooms, and I built a temporary models’ room in the hallway of the house.

  I did all this in two days, without sleeping. Everything I couldn’t hang out the back windows, I stashed away in the fourteen-foot-tall bathroom, but left room around the bathtub—which I had painted gold and filled with champagne—from which two rented butlers served the mob. Tiny sandwiches were piled four feet high on top of the john. There just wasn’t room left anywhere. By eleven on the night of the showing, my photographer friend Mr. Mack got out of a taxi and, not seeing a soul around, thought it was going to be a bust. I told him not to worry, that the show was set for midnight, and I was sure everyone would be there. I remember Mr. Mack quietly got on the telephone and called his wife to get ahold of all their friends to help fill the place up. When Mrs. Mack and her friends arrived they could hardly open their cab door, for the crowd.

  By eleven forty-five the cops were out and cars were jamming Fifty-Fourth Street. The neighbors were all hanging out their windows, and well over five hundred people were trying to get through my door. All of the two hundred out-of-town press members came, if not out of spite then surely curiosity, as their leader Eleanor Lambert had warned, from the stage of the Hotel Pierre, that I was a fraud, and the cast of My Fair Lady wouldn’t be at my show. She advised them not to waste their time. Eleanor soon discovered you don’t tell the press what to do.

  Poor Rex Harrison was nearly mauled. As he reached the door every female in hailing distance went wild. Some people say Julie Andrews made it; I never saw her. I did see Jayne Mansfield in a pink mink stole and white string gloves. Her husband carried her, and Look Magazine snapped lots of pictures. All of the two hundred press got in, but many of them became panicky over fire, etc. and started a hell of a rush back out. It reminded me of the Pacific meeting the Atlantic. I remember making a speech, that the mannequins would show the hats as soon as they could wiggle their way through the crowd—and this took twenty minutes of wiggling! When there wasn’t another inch of space inside the rooms, friends and I desperately set up little gold chairs on the sidewalk of Fifty-Fourth Street, and I promised that the models would march right out the door and show the hats. Several of President Kennedy’s sisters sat in the front row on Fifty-Fourth Street—they never got up the stairway—as my more fragile society customers stood in astonishment in the street. The neighbors across the way had the best seats of all, sitting in their shirtsleeves and summer shorts, drinking beer and eating sandwiches. The show finally got on after I broke down in tears over the excitement of the hats. It was a glamorous show, and everyone who survived the ninety-degree heat to see it still talks about it.

  After the show was over, the lucky ones dipped their cups into the gold bathtub filled with champagne, but no one
was hungry. I ate those little sandwiches for a week after.

  The show was not for the New York press, as theirs was set for the less sophisticated hour of eleven the following morning, but the New York Times was there on the spot and managed to report the midnight doings. They felt that what the hats lacked in wearability they made up for in the best show in town. The out-of-town press wrote rave reviews; they said it was the unique show of their lives, and they felt they had discovered a new talent. They were really the first ones to appreciate my hats. They seemed to have no inhibitions about exciting fashions.

  The whole thing cost about $2,200 and was certainly worth every cent; although it was a very hungry summer after that, I never regretted it for a second. From that moment on, the House of William J. was on the map, not with a refined dignity, but with an angry howl. The conservatives who ran the New York fashion world in the 1950s fought my imagination every inch of the way. The New York Times, the World-Telegram, Look, This Week, Hats, the Journal-American, the New York Post, and especially the New Yorker were solidly behind me. The Herald Tribune’s Eugenia Sheppard was definitely against me. In my fifteen years of showing, she never came to see one of the collections. Life, Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, and all the so-called chichi clique magazines were the opposition, ignoring my work and sometimes calling it freakish. At this point money started to come into the house, and the furniture hanging out the window never resettled in the same rooms. As the French madame had moved from the second floor, I turned this into the new workroom, rearranging the first floor into salons. Jack Burkard, my interior decorator friend, transformed the drab floor into a sumptuous Venetian palace, with walls completely draped in pure white silk, palms in every corner of the room, French furniture covered in apricot silk French velvet, three huge crystal chandeliers dazzling in the gilt baroque mirrors, and gold carpets from wall to wall. The bay window held a huge mahogany statue of two cherubs tossing a seashell into the air, which was filled with live flowers. There was nothing in Paris or New York to equal the ritzy goings-on! I had climbed another rung or two on the fashion ladder.