Fashion Climbing

by Bill Cunningham

  Within a month, Mrs. Harkness and I were partners and immediately opened a very grand shop on East Fifty-Seventh Street, all decorated in white and gold, with lots of crystal chandeliers. The rise to prosperity was so sudden that I spent most of the three thousand dollars on decor. Mrs. Harkness, not having been in business before, never thought to ask if I had any business sense—which I definitely never had. At any rate, she had lots of Wall Street lawyers to protect her, as one of her friends had just lost a couple of hundred thousand dollars with a fashion designer who decided he didn’t have to work and became a playboy with the lady’s money.

  At this point I found my second milliner while I was buying used mirrors in a shop that was closing. The ladies of the shop recommended their prize milliner, a lady by the name of Mrs. Nielsen. A date was set for me to meet Mrs. Nielsen, and I was a little afraid, as I thought the hats I’d seen in her shop were all for old ladies. When Mrs. Nielsen and I met, it was love at first sight. She says that when I told her I didn’t have much money, but expected to make some, she couldn’t resist and wanted to help me. Plus, I looked so young she could hardly believe it. My knees were showing through my pants, which were worn thin.

  The first showing in the new salon was January 1950, and unlike my very first show, where only Virginia Pope came, now all the fashion world came knocking down the door. The excitement of the Harkness money was like honey to bees. Overnight I was discovered by the darlings and dearies of the fashion world who desperately climbed onto anything new with money.

  The first store to buy my hats wholesale was Gunther Jaeckel. Their buyer, Miss LaGauche, bought from this first spring collection, and I can still feel the thrill of seeing my work in the Fifty-Seventh Street store window. It’s always a great compliment to designers to have their work exhibited. Erlebacher’s, a store in Washington, DC, was the second to buy. They loved my wild hats, and especially a rather uninhibited number made of scouring pads from the five-and-dime store and stretched over a helmet of gold lamé, with big black feathers shooting out of it. But it was the conservative hats that paid the bills; the hats that had excitement and fancy, however, were dearest to my heart. Birds and nature were always an inspiration. Graceful wings soaring through the air constantly gave rise to the best hats. Unfortunately, the cash-paying customers didn’t think as I did, and I had to give away all the best hats so there would be room for more. I found, years later, that most of the fabulous trendsetting clothes of Paris and New York are lent to celebrities at no charge, so as to advertise the designers. All through history it’s been this way. Seldom do the most fantastic clothes you see in the glossy high-style magazines sell. If you go into any top Fifth Avenue store at the end of the season, you’ll be sure to find the most ravishing creations knocked down to a quarter of their original prices. The stores buy the clothes just to fill the dull, everyday stock with the thrills that make women buy.

  I was really pretty dumb in those early days. I didn’t even know the names of the famous Hollywood stars. One day Miss Keene rang me up from her desk on the ground floor to tell me that Dorothy Lamour was climbing up to see my hats. Kathy was all excited: this was our first celebrity, and she could have killed me when I said, “But who is Dorothy Lamour?”

  I had another famous customer for whom I had been making hats for seven years before someone told me who she was; on my next visit, I asked my customer, whose name was Kay Francis, if she was a star. She laughed for weeks afterward, remembering how she had enjoyed our years of working together, as I had always treated her like a good friend, with none of the phony-baloney bowing and scraping. It wasn’t that I wasn’t impressed by people; I always thought all people are equal. One day before I was fired from Bonwit’s, Mr. Hoving said, “Bill, you’re not afraid of anyone.” And I looked at him with great surprise, and said, “No human being should be afraid of another, although we respect his high position.”

  During those first years of hat making, I went to my first Beaux-Arts costume ball in New York. On these fantasy nights, I would create the most fantastic costumes for my friends and myself. Never realizing there was a theme to each ball, I would create whatever was inspiring to me at the time. The first costume I made was Kathy Keene dressed as the most provocative ostrich you’ve ever laid eyes on. The base of her costume was an old Jantzen bathing suit, which we feathered and beaded; a huge court train of ostrich plumes gave it a Folies Bergère look, and a turban of peacock plumes made it like no other bird. The irreverent mixing of plumage didn’t bother me a bit, and Kathy felt like a bird of paradise. She never fussed so long as I didn’t cover her legs, as they were her great asset. As for myself, I was something right out of the ballet, with two live chickens, one black and the other white. I gilded each with glitter dust, by putting a little paste on the feathers. I tucked both birds under my arm, and off we went to the Waldorf, where the artists’ ball was in full frenzy. I had planned to carry the two gilded birds into the ballroom before letting them loose on rhinestone leashes, but the big crowd of onlookers lining the hotel lobby, pushing and shoving to see the costumes, was just the right amount of encouragement to show off our complete entourage. As Kathy strutted across the lobby, I released the two chickens, and all hell broke loose. The damned birds went wild, flying every which way. The rhinestone-studded leashes were snapping under the frantic strain. Our voluptuous entrance went haywire, giving the crowd a good laugh and severely damaging my dignity. As I jumped around the hotel trying to retrieve the gilded hens that were causing a real scene in the Peacock Alley restaurant, ladies were screaming, and waiters were running all over, trying to capture the birds. I never did get one bird back . . . it flew out the Park Avenue doors and caused a rush outside the hotel. Someone in the crowd subdued the bird and wouldn’t give it back—seems they were bird lovers who wanted to turn us over to the police.

  To make a long story short, we didn’t win first prize, and the day after the ball, Kathy and I killed the bird, as we had no money for food for the weekend. (I had often chopped off birds’ heads on my aunt’s farm as a kid, and it didn’t bother me a bit.) At another ball, I was still suffering from my bird obsession. This time, Kathy was dressed as a chicken coming out of a half-open egg. I then proceeded to make a huge six-foot sculptured wire cage to cover her. The poor thing had a miserable night trying to dance with the cage on, and I wouldn’t let her take it off and spoil the costume. At the third costume ball, we finally won last prize, and caused the fire department to invade the Hotel Astor ballroom. Our costumed entourage consisted of five friends and me. We were a barnyard scene; over an enormous Marie Antoinette hoopskirt, I built a real haystack ten feet high, all covered with real hay. Underneath it we placed one of my shy friends. Kathy was again a bird, and I played the big bad wolf with a grisly mask showing off a terrific set of uppers. We had to hire a moving van to get the haystack from the shop, where it had been hanging from the crystal chandelier, infuriating many of the customers who were trying to keep my mind on making serious hats. To get the haystack into the hotel, we covered it with muslin, as the firemen would have stopped any flammable costumes from going into the ballroom. As the grand march started, we uncovered our haystack and paraded out on the ballroom floor. The hotel officials and firemen nearly dropped dead of shock when they saw the haystack, and a terrible row started as they began to drag the haystack off the floor, fearing someone would throw a match in it. I kept pleading that it was fireproof, but I knew damn well it wasn’t, and my shy friend who was underneath got mad as hell when they dragged him and the costume off the floor. When he was pulled out from underneath the mess, he threw a punch at the first person he saw, and then fists were flying. He ended up with a black eye. When the cops finally got the damned thing out onto Forty-Fourth Street, they took a match to it just to see if it was fireproof, as I had been claiming all the way out. Fireproof, nothing—it went up like the blazing neon lights of Broadway!

  These costumes and nights of fantasy were wonderful for designers;
they unlocked doors and let the inhibitions shoot off the built-up tensions of everyday designing. People need this chance to explode. There should be more costume parties. Every year I would create some fantastic costume, winning first prize on four occasions. One time a group of friends and I went as Roman conquerors. I built a life-size papier-mâché elephant over a twelve-foot-high stepladder, mounted on a dolly that was manually moved by a man beneath it. Yards of chicken wire formed the frame, over which newspapers saturated in flour and water molded the shape of the huge beast. Kathy was to represent the queen of Rome, practically naked, riding on top of the elephant’s head, while another friend was supposed to be a Christian slave, her limp body hung over the elephant’s trunk. Another friend carried a sumptuous beach umbrella of white satin with golden tassels; yet another waved an eight-foot-wide peacock fan. The whole thing got out of hand and started to look like the circus, and we finally had to get a police permit to parade it up Fifth Avenue to the Plaza Hotel. The night of the ball arrived, and the cops came to escort us. Well, there was a two-hour delay while Kathy was being primped at the hairdresser, and I struggled to move the elephant. Naturally I had never thought about getting the damned thing out the door. We pinched and squeezed the poor animal until I was in a flood of tears, all my hours of work being ruined. When we finally got it out on the street, the spray paints were put into action, and the pearl-gray beast was mended. By this time the two cops and most of the entourage were beginning to weave under the many martinis they had been consuming. We started up Fifth Avenue hours late, with me beating a huge Chinese gong, and the friend carrying the umbrella stumbling and frantically waving the thing over the elephant’s head. At the Plaza Hotel, we had to enter through the huge service elevator. We had only five tickets for seven people, so I slit open the belly of the elephant, and two friends crawled in, and we pulled our Trojan elephant into the ballroom. Just before the grand march, the umbrella carrier passed out. It’s a good thing I don’t drink, as someone had to have his wits about him. I quickly wrapped a white tablecloth around a busboy as we marched out and caused a sensation. Unbelievably, we didn’t win any prize, and I was in despair. Later that evening, an artist friend of mine told me that prizes were given only to members of the school that was hosting the ball. Very unfair. But the following year my artist friend bought the tickets for me, and sure enough we won first prize.

  During all the hysteria before the blowout evening, Mrs. Nielsen carried on the business. The one year she went to the ball with us, she was so shocked by the naked people running around that she threatened to leave. But as she sat at the table, one young lady arrived fully costumed in the splendor of the French court of Marie Antoinette. Mrs. Nielsen was oohing and aahing over how lovely this girl looked, but when she turned around and her behind was stark naked and framed in a baroque gilt picture frame, Mrs. Nielsen almost fainted, and left the ballroom thinking the devil had taken hold of it. The orgies that took place under the tables never bothered me, and I rarely ever saw them, as I was always up dancing and not just sitting and watching the wild goings-on.

  One of the best costumes I ever made was a very simple affair that won top prize: a model friend, Ellen, and I went as Greta Garbo and Maurice Chevalier, both wearing skinny black leotards with huge natural straw hats that covered half our bodies. Ellen’s hat was an enormous boater, the brim five feet wide with a crown to match. She was a darling Maurice Chevalier, with a white starched front and a bamboo cane. I went as a hidden Greta Garbo, under an enormous straw cloche. Other first prize winners I designed over the years were a pair of gigantic white seashells; and another time, a group of four mammoth fruits and vegetables made in huge straw shapes of carrots, tomatoes, watermelons, and oranges. But the most gorgeous costume we ever made, which won a thousand-dollar prize, was entitled “The Devil’s Passion,” where I used ten miles of red feathers and sequins to expose my beautiful girlfriend and cover myself. These parties always came in April, just before I started the new fall collection, and they were wonderful to get all the wildness out of my system and let me quietly and peacefully settle down to designing the new fall hats.

  The shop on Fifty-Seventh Street was starting to build. The press were now recognizing my work, not with praise, exactly, but at least full coverage. Miss Claire Weil, the dean of the millinery world, had taken me under her wing. Store buyers were placing small trial orders. De Pinna’s gave us our first newspaper advertisement, picturing a hat in the shape of a cherry pie with a slice out of the back where it fit over the fashionable chignon of the time. The ad had a good response, and for the first time Mrs. Nielsen and I were working until midnight every night, making cherry pie hats until we wished George Washington had never cut down that damned tree!

  A Helmet Covered in Flowers

  In May of 1950, I had a notice from Uncle Sam requesting the pleasure of my company in the United States Army. At first I was heartbroken at the thought of having to give up all the years of hard work, but I never had a mind that dwelled on the bad. I always believed that good came from every situation, and immediately I thought: I might get stationed in France, and it would be a fabulous opportunity to see Europe. And the idea of looking in on the Paris designers was enough to set me in orbit. I got this thought in my head, and straightaway started studying French. Of course, my chances of being sent to France at a time when the Korean War was at its height were one in a million. But the idea of France never left my head. Mrs. Harkness and her lawyers were in a rage that I was drafted, just when their 60 percent share of the business was beginning to look rosy.

  The Harkness lawyers got very nasty and claimed all sorts of damages, and sued for the return of the three-thousand-dollar investment. They wrote my family arrogant letters and treated them like peasants, until my uncle got on his high horse and put them in their narrow-minded place. I must say my uncle couldn’t have been nicer. After despising my fashion work for so long, he came to the rescue when I really needed him. He realized these people who had taken a 60 percent cut of the business when they formed the partnership figured that I had no business sense and they could do what they wanted. At any rate, my uncle prevented a lawsuit and reimbursed the Harkness lawyers half of the three thousand dollars, even though they weren’t entitled to it. My uncle also paid the remaining debts when the Harkness lawyers walked out. Many years later, I repaid my uncle every cent, and learned a damned good lesson: never take financial help, as the investors are only interested in getting all they can out of the artist, giving little care for honest creativity. I never held Mrs. Harkness responsible, as she was under the influence of her coldhearted lawyers.

  From the first day in army camp, I had two years of the most wonderfully broadening experience. During basic training I was the star of the camouflage maneuvers. My helmet was always covered with a dazzling garden of flowers and grass, as we advanced on the enemy, out on the deserted flats of Fort Dix, New Jersey. I can remember the exasperation of the sergeant as my spectacular headgear stood out like the Garden of Eden on a desert while the camouflaged company was to be sneaking up on the enemy. As a result, I was always on guard duty, marching around some isolated water tower. Thank God it was summer. I circled the cursed thing a thousand times, holding my heavy rifle as if it were a bouquet of ostrich feathers, with ideas for fashion designs filling my head. All during this period I kept studying French and thinking of France, even though my company was being trained for duty in Korea.

  When graduation from basic training came, they lined us up in long rows, and we were separated into two groups, one for Korea and one for European duty in Germany. I landed in the European group. The thrill was so great that I rushed down to the PX and bought every French language book I could get my hands on, even though my papers read “Germany.” All I could think was, what’s the difference? France is a neighboring country, and I could smell Paris in the wind. We boarded the army ship in Brooklyn, and I’m sure none of the Vanderbilts could have felt any more excited boarding a
ship for Europe than I did at that moment. I had only been in the swan boats in Boston’s Public Garden, but now, crossing the Atlantic seemed like the swellest thing, even though a hundred other soldiers would sleep in the same cabin. The chow line for lunch started around ten in the morning, and it was just one constant wait after another. I had purchased and studied a book on handwriting analysis, so each day while we waited in line I would sit on the deck, and a group of sad soldiers were waiting for me to read the handwriting of their girlfriends’ love letters. It was a howl. The boys believed everything I told them, plus I got to read some of the most interesting letters. This tiny thirty-five-page book made me an expert in one quick reading. It’s a wonder some of the soldiers didn’t throw me overboard for some of the scandalous things I told them.

  The days flew by, and the crossing was sunny and cold, except for two days of storms that had half the three thousand soldiers on board hanging over the railing. I slept on deck a couple of nights, not from seasickness—as nothing seemed to bother me—but the perfume of the hallways and sleeping quarters was enough to make your hair stand on end. We landed in Germany on September 28, and the early fall landscape of the Bavarian countryside is enchantingly etched in my memory for life.

  I wasn’t in Germany two days when orders came that a hundred men were needed in the newly opened camps of France. The requirements were that you had to speak French (to be able to mix with people, as the French were in the throes of their “Go Home, Americans” demonstrations), and a college education was preferred. I made it only because my records had shown entrance to Harvard. Thank God it didn’t say how long I’d stayed. I was able to speak French fairly well, from all the studying I had done. It seems the power of positive thought really works. I was so excited I couldn’t sleep on the overnight train to Paris. I was to be stationed in the southwest of France, at La Rochelle, a small port town.