Fashion Climbing: A Memoir with Photographs

Part of what made the documentary Bill Cunningham New York so fascinating was the enigma of its subject: the photographer infatuated with fashion who himself lived an ascetic and deeply private life. One of his secrets, revealed after his death in 2016, was that he had written a memoir, apparently in the '60s. Does it lift that veil of privacy? Not really, but it's fascinating nonetheless. Covering his beauty-loving youth in a dour Boston family and his gleeful, intrepid life as a '50s hat designer and '60s fashion journalist (after women stopped wearing hats), it's a further testament to his marvelous insistence on living a life in pursuit of your passion. More inspiring than introspective, the young Bill—naive but ambitious, prim but open-minded—comes across as a combination of Mr. Rogers and Andy Warhol. What a wonderful life.