Asheville News

Documentary film about legendary N.Y. street fashion photographer, ‘Bill Cunningham New York’, coming to Asheville’s Fine Arts Theatre in June

Jason Sandford April 10, 2011

Jason Sandford

Jason Sandford is a reporter, writer, blogger and photographer interested in all things Asheville.

Bill Cunningham New York, an award-winning documentary film about legendary New York Times fashion photographer Bill Cunningham, is coming to the Fine Arts Theatre in downtown Asheville starting June 3. This is great news for Asheville’s vibrant fashion scene.

More about the movie:

The “Bill” in question is 80+ New York Times photographer Bill Cunningham. For decades, this Schwinn-riding cultural anthropologist has been obsessively and inventively chronicling fashion trends and high society charity soirées for the Times Style section in his columns “On the Street” and “Evening Hours.” Documenting uptown fixtures (Wintour, Tom Wolfe, Brooke Astor, David Rockefeller—who all appear in the film out of their love for Bill), downtown eccentrics and everyone in between, Cunningham’s enormous body of work is more reliable than any catwalk as an expression of time, place and individual flair. In turn, Bill Cunningham New York is a delicate, funny and often poignant portrait of a dedicated artist whose only wealth is his own humanity and unassuming grace.

Asheville has a number of talented and prolific fashion designers. And, just like Cunningham, our little burg has accomplished people covering local fashion. Alli Marshall sits atop the heap, and does a great job with her own street fashion photography, blogging and writing at Mountain Xpress with Asheville Street Style. There’s also ashevillefashions.com, a newcomer to the scene.

Great news! Now all we have to do is get Cunningham himself to come visit Asheville.

Jason Sandford

Jason Sandford is a reporter, writer, blogger and photographer interested in all things Asheville.

Cage the Elephant (doing some stage-diving) @ The Orange Peel

Ukulele Wednesday (on Sunday): ‘Hold on Me’

4 Comments

JasonDefender April 14, 2011

"Vibrant" just means "pulsing with life, lively," and it appears that Jason has his finger on the pulse of a lot of what's going on in Asheville. If there's widespread interest in clothes and style in Asheville, why is Jason wrong to call that interest "vibrant?" Why does Beth say Asheville's fashion interest isn't lively or vibrant? Is she making a quantitative judgment? A qualitative judgment? Fashionistas would like to know what she means.

Reply
Ash April 12, 2011

Beth, thanks for your comment. All things are relative. Of course Asheville can't compare to Paris or NY. But for a city our size, I think that yes, we have a vibrant fashion scene. I should have been more clear.

Reply
Beth April 11, 2011

LOL Jason….to say that Asheville has a "vibrant" fashion scene is just not true.

The only cities that have vibrant fashion scenes are: New York, Paris & Milan.

Reply
Jennifer S. April 10, 2011

BlogAsheville.com is slowly retooling its blog directory and now lists local fashion blogs, BTW:
http://www.blogasheville.com/asheville-directory

Reply