How a brush with Bill Cunningham led to one of Fern Mallis’s most memorable interviews
“Every so often, the glamorous veil that conceals the vulnerable and human aspects of the most famous fashion influencers is lifted. Fern Mallis’s enlightening 92nd Street Y interviews were all about those moments.”
—W Magazine
No topic is off-limits when Fern Mallis, the award-winning creator of New York Fashion Week, interviews fashion’s most prestigious talents onstage at 92Y. This month, ten of her most celebrated Fashion Icons interview are available in full from our vault for the very first time, and can be accessed through September 30.
How did she make them all happen? Reflecting on the online release of these great interviews, Fern Mallis shared with us the story of how one of her all-time favorites came about.
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I have so many wonderful memories of my Fashion Icons interviews, getting people to agree, and then hearing the marvelous stories about their lives and careers. It’s hard to select one moment, but the way I got the celebrated and beloved New York Times photographer Bill Cunningham to agree to sit down with me at 92Y certainly wins out.
I’ve known and loved Bill for my entire career in the fashion and design industries. We’d always have a fun chat at every event, and he’d share his opinions on people and events with me. When my series was launched at 92Y, he was always on my list of interview candidates. I knew it wouldn’t be easy to persuade him to come, as he is a very private and actually quite shy man. I asked him many times over years, and he’d always say, “OK, child, I’ll think about it,” or, “Yes, we’ll figure it out,” and whenever I tried to get more specific he’d run off to take a picture.
Then the first documentary of his life was released. It changed his life — and he hated that. He was no longer an invisible man on his bike taking pictures. Now, people would stop him everywhere and try to engage and talk to him, and he wanted none of that. But I persisted, and one day he said, “I sent you a letter explaining why I won’t do the Y.” I asked where he had sent it. He didn’t remember. On another occasion he looked for me and said, “I sent it to the 92nd Street Y.” So I reached out to my pals there and said please look for a letter sent to me from the New York Times. Sure enough, they found it and sent it to me. Bill explained that he had not, and would not, see the film made about him, and that he felt a little betrayed, and had agreed to do it because Arthur Sulzberger asked him to do it and it would be good for the Times. He couldn’t say no to Arthur, whom he adored. He mentioned all the attention he gets and how he hates that, and just wants to disappear into the background and take his photos. He was extremely complimentary about me and told me how much he loved me … and was sorry to not partake. The next time I saw him, I told him I got his letter and that I wouldn’t keep asking any more, and that I totally understood and still adored him, and that it was our loss.
A few months later, at the beginning of June, I flew back from Fashion Week in Mumbai, arriving in New York at 5 AM. That night was the CFDA’s annual Awards Gala at Lincoln Center. I wore a saffron colored chiffon caftan and, of course, was busy chatting with everyone at the pre-cocktail reception. I found myself talking with Bill after he’d taken pictures of me. He was holding his camera and little pad to record names, and I was holding a vodka and soda. As Bill swung around to write down a name, he knocked my glass and it poured down my dress. Bill was horrified. “Can I buy you a new dress?” he asked. I said, “No — I just flew in from India with this,” and he said, “Let me pay for the dry cleaning.” I told him that it was only vodka, but that if it was red wine I would kill him. He was visibly shaken, said he’d never done that in forty years of shooting … he wouldn’t leave my side. I reassured him that I’d be fine, and told him to go do his work. Then he said, “I’ll do anything.” And so I asked him:
“Will you do the Y?”
The rest is history — and an epic, very moving, historic interview with a very special man.