“We all get dressed for Bill,” says American Vogue Editor in Chief and queen of fashion Anna Wintour. The “Bill” in question is New York Times photographer Bill Cunningham. Bill Cunningham New York is a fabulous film – or rather a documentary – about this wonderful man. I have seen the film twice and insist all Review-istas head to the Cinema this weekend to catch it on the big screen.

This touching and heartfelt film chronicles the life of Bill as the original street photographer and a “cultural anthropologist.” Now over 80 years old, he has been photographing the New York social and street scene for literally decades. Designer Oscar de la Renta said, “More than anyone else in the city, he has the whole visual history of the last 40 or 50 years of New York. It’s the total scope of fashion in the life of New York.”

It’s an engrossing movie intertwining interviews with heavy weights like Anna Wintour, Tom Wolfe and David Rockefeller (who all appear in the film out of their love for Bill) with snippets of him shooting high society soirées, the Paris shows or just lingering on the street capturing emerging fashion trends. He is known and respected by all the major fashion players all over the world. In one amusing incident at the Paris shows he is called “the most important person on earth” as he is pulled out of the queue and whisked to the front row. (In 2008 he was awarded the title Chevalier dans L’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Ministry of Culture which is very prestigious).

A very eccentric person, he lives alone in a tiny flat in Carnegie Hall. He sleeps on boxes surrounded by books and cabinets filled with photos. He wears a bright blue French workman’s jacket. He rides his bicycle everywhere with his camera slung around his neck. He knows everyone and everyone loves him. He calls everyone “kid” and says everything is “maahvelous”. He eschews anything that might seem frivolous and superficial like restaurants, shopping and furniture. The antithesis of the people he photographs.

He is not interested in celebrity. He says “money is cheap: liberty and freedom are what are expensive.” He is funny, charming, kind and his one obsession is shooting fabulous clothes. A sometimes unassuming, shy man, he comes across as someone with integrity and incredible strength of spirit. Oh and he has the best eye in the business. This is “a poignant portrait of a dedicated artist whose only wealth is his own humanity and unassuming grace.” A must see.

Check out the movie website here.

Check out “On The Street” slideshow on The New York Times here.

Yours fashionably,

FiFi
www.FiFi.com.au

If you are a Review-ista then you must love fashion. And if you love fashion then you would know all about the fabulous Carine Roitfeld. Karl Lagerfeld once said that if you closed your eyes and imagined the ideal French woman, it would be Carine Roitfeld. She is known as a visionary fashion editor and for pushing the limits in her shoots with “subversive styling”. She is famous for her collaboration with Mario Testino and Tom Ford at Gucci. She was the Editor in Chief of French Vogue for 10 years until she unexpectedly resigned early this year (Read more in our post from earlier this year).

So what has she been up to since she left the top post of arguably the most glamorous fashion magazine in the world? A lot! She has collaborated with the New York luxury store Barneys, she has been styling shoots for V magazine, as well as working on advertising campaigns for Chanel. She said recently she is going to launch her own magazine. “Right now, I have the luxury to choose [what I will do]: Why not with a new magazine in my name? I’m looking for the right formula.”

Most importantly she has now released a big, fat glossy, coffee table book. Appropriately called Irreverent, it’s part memoir, part scrap book spanning her 30 year career. It’s 386 pages of fashion fabulousness! There are images of her most provocative shoots (Eva Herzigova posing with a lot of bloody “boeuf” for The Face in 1997), intimate family shots (she looks fabulous pregnant in black, of course) as well as behind the scenes Polaroids from many of her cutting edge editorials. Many of the pages have hand written notes with anecdotes and musings about her fashion philosophy and her personal life.

“Carine, and her vision of French Vogue, embodies all that the world likes to think of as Parisian style: a sense of chic that’s impeccable and sometimes idiosyncratic,” says Anna Wintour. A must read for the any fashionista. Add it to your Christmas gift list now!

Yours fashionably,

FiFi
www.FiFi.com.au