Coomo6

Applied Humanities

Humanities with Impact The Show and the Street 6 Module Six: Impact of the Humanities, continued / Page 6.1.3 The Show and the Street On this page: 0 of 4 attempted (0%) | 0 of 2 correct (0%) Objective: Examine the reciprocal relationship between high art and daily life.

Trickle-Down Fashion?

There’s a scene in the movie The Devil Wears Prada where a fashion executive explains to her young and naïve intern that the sweater she’s wearing, which she no doubt “plucked out of a bargain bin,” is in a color selected for her by the people in that very room. What she is saying, in effect, is that what people wear is actually dictated by the editors of fashion magazines.

But that’s not really the way it works.

Magazine editors do help their readers find and appreciate the best clothes. And if that’s all there were to the process, then we would, in fact, live in a world of “trickle-down fashion,” where the decisions of an elite few determine the choices of the masses. But the reverse is true as well: The masses influence the elite.

Bill Cunningham, legendary fashion photographer for the New York Times, was among those most attuned both to the tastes of the runway and to the tastes of the street. Even as a teenager, Bill was fascinated by what people wore. His attention to fashion began as a hobby before landing him a column in Women’s Wear Daily. Then he got a camera. Here’s how he tells what happened next:

I had just the most marvelous time with that camera. Everybody I saw I was able to record, and that’s what it’s all about. I realized that you didn’t know anything unless you photographed the shows and the street, to see how people interpreted what designers hoped they would buy. I realized that the street was the missing ingredient.

There’s nothing new about this idea. People had been photographing the street since the camera was invented. At the turn of the 20th century, the horse races were the big thing. Lartigue was just a boy then. But the Seeberger brothers in France were taking pictures. They, and others, were commissioned by lace and fabric houses to go to the grand prix days at the

Longchamp, Chantilly, Auteuil and Deauville racetracks and photograph fashionable women. The resulting albums were used as sample books by dressmakers. (Cunningham, 2002/2016)

Here Cunningham helps us see that for as long as there have been cameras, fashion designers have been eager for photos of what people on the street are wearing. This takes nothing away from their originality, but speaks to the fact that art is always created in a culture, not a vacuum. Every new creation is a blend of the existing and the new.

Cunningham’s approach was disarmingly simple: He took pictures of whatever struck him as interesting. As a result, his work serves to document shifts in fashion over the second half of the 20th century. Here, for instance, he describes capturing the new look of the 1960s for the first time:

At the Times, when Charlotte Curtis was covering society, she called me one Easter Sunday and said, “Bill, take your little camera and go quickly to Central Park, to the Sheep Meadow.” That morning I had been on Fifth Avenue photographing the Easter parade. So I got on my bike and went up to the Sheep Meadow, and there before me were all the kids—the flower children. All these kids dressed in everything from their mother’s and grandmother’s trunks, lying on the grass. It was unbelievable. It was all about the fashion revolution. (Cunningham, 2002/2016)

Cunningham was in a unique position to think deeply about fashion: what it means and how it reflects culture (and vice versa). In his own words:

I think fashion is as vital and as interesting today as ever. I know what people with a more formal attitude mean when they say they’re horrified by what they see on the street. But fashion is doing its job. It’s mirroring exactly our times.

The main thing I love about street photography is that you find the answers you don’t see at the fashion shows. You find information for readers so they can visualize themselves. This was something I realized early on: If you just cover the designers in the shows, that’s only one facet. You also need the street and the evening hours. If you cover the three things, you have the full picture of what people are wearing.

I go out every day. When I get depressed at the office, I go out, and as soon

as I’m on the street and see people, I feel better. But I never go out with a preconceived idea. I let the street speak to me. (Cunningham, 2002/2016)

Multiple-Choice Question

What myth does Cunningham’s work best expose?

Only women can do fashion photography well. New York has a disproportionate influence in the fashion world. A small group of elites, without outside influence, decides what will be fashionable. Cameras lie.

Multiple-Choice Question

What was Cunningham’s approach to deciding what to take photos of?

how well an outfit aligned with current trends whatever struck him as interesting his own campaign for clean lines and simple fashion how famous a person was

Response Board What was most surprising to you in this essay?

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Response Board In what way is fashion art?

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