Worth the Watch - Bill Cunningham New York

 It's not work, it's pleasure. That's why I feel so guilty.

Everybody else does work - I have too much fun.

Set aside a little time to watch "Bill Cunningham New York," a 2011 documentary (available on Amazon Instant Video, Hulu, iTunes) featuring the late fashion photographer and journalist for the New York Times who built his legacy documenting fashion trends on the streets of NYC. It's not a film about menswear or even style in a manner that may interest you or me personally, but you can't help but get drawn into his passion for life and his work (which you could argue were one and the same). Cunningham's ability to serve as society's mirror and reflect back developing fashion in real life chronicles decades of style in the US. Equally impressive was his personality and character, the combination of which is found in a person ever too rarely. I'm left wondering if they still make men like Bill Cunningham. I'm not sure they ever did before.

One thing you might notice looking through pictures or footage of Cunningham is that he was always smiling. Not the sort of smile you force out of your face for a posed picture with your boss at a Christmas party, but an ear-to-ear grin usually accompanied by a twinkle in his eye, as if he had a great joke he just couldn't wait to tell you. That spark clearly came from his work - work that he tirelessly pursued pedaling around the streets of NYC day and night in his signature bright blue work coat, perpetually excited for what surprises the street had in store for him.

Part of what made Cunningham so singular is he didn't care about fame, money, or the celebrity of fashion. Upon begrudgingly accepting France's L'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres award in 2008, he famously noted "I'm not interested in celebrities with their free dresses. Look at the clothes, the cut, the silhouette, the color. It's the clothes. Not the celebrity and not the spectacle." Such a statement is so refreshingly antithetical to what drives much of the fashion industry, I think it's worth the price of admission alone. Regardless of what interests you about style and what corner of fashion you subscribe to, this is a sentiment we should all aspire to.

Enough rambling. It got 99% on Rotten Tomatoes. Just watch it.