Before Bill Cunningham rode his bike around the city and took pictures of fashionable New Yorkers for the New York Times, he helped some of them dress like William J., the Milliner.
Together with socialites and old Hollywood stars – among them were Doris Duke, Joan Crawford, Marilyn Monroe and Ginger Rogers – his fans were people like Venera Macaluso van Queens, who died in 2018 and went with Netty. Eight of her unique hats designed by Mr. Cunningham are now ready auction As part of a sale that ends on March 21.
Styles on the block include a hat that looks like a small purple pancake with silk lilies of the valley that sprouts out, a fascinator with stars in golden sequins and black velvet, and a hat with a sprinkling -like bug that is on top of flouncy layers of neutral tone -sided chiffon.
At the time, Mr. Cunningham made the hats, some sold for $ 35 and others for $ 65, he wrote in his memoirs, “Fashion Climbing.” Bids at the time of publication varied from around $ 150 to $ 250.
After Mrs. Macaluso died at the age of 93, her son Robert J. Macaluso found her hats on a shelf in her closet. Mr Macaluso, 72, a retired seller at the Textile House Scalaandré, who is now a deacon in Saint Margaret Parish in Madison, Con. And then kept them in tissue paper in his garage.
He explained that the first connection of his mother with Mr. Cunningham was by her brother -in -law and his wife, who ran in the same social circle as Mr. Cunningham. They invited him for parties and for Sunday dinners in the house of Mr. Macaluso in Queens.
“My grandmother served pasta with veal pipelets,” said Mr. Macaluso, whose father, a photographic printer of the New York Times from 1965 to 1990, sometimes worked with Mr Cunningham. “Bill would come by. He was so charming and cheerful.”
Mr Macaluso said that his mother likes to go to places with his father or friends as a sign of the Dove and Roma di Notte, two restaurants in Manhattan that are now closed, as well as to Tavern on the Green and the Plaza Hotel.
“Bill was intrigued by the feeling of my mother’s fashion,” Mr. Macaluso remembered. “Because of Bill’s enthusiasm, he would sometimes say,” Netty, this would be Mahvelous on you. “
Macaluso’s cousin Barbara Starace, now 80, who was also Mrs. Macaluso’s goddaughter, said that she “always looked like a movie star.”
Mrs. Starace remembered that Mrs. Macaluso was wearing the fascinator with stars designed by Mr. Cunningham One New Year’s Eve. Mrs. Starace received another from the William J. Hats from Mrs. Macaluso – a pink velvet cork tractor – after she died.
“I put it on a cuddle pig on my bed,” said Mrs. Starace, and added that she never liked hating. “It reminds me of my aunt Netty.” Mrs. Macaluso also wore a William J. Hat, who was very long and had feathers, with the wedding of Mrs. Starace in 1960.
From the couple for sale, that hat-a 13½-inch high high flute of purple silk velvet velvet with Haanveren-the favorite of Tanner C. Branson, the head of sale for luxury handbags and couture at Freeman’s Hindman, holding the auction. He described it as “Typical William J.”
Other hats for sale are a black velvet fez with rooster springs, a space -time black style with network and a pink straw hat that also has nets and made birds from feathers opposite beak to beak.
“People who wear this are very interested in fashion,” said Mr. Branson. “They are interested in being seen and to make a statement.”
When Mrs. Macaluso’s hats arrived in Freeman’s Hindman in Chicago, he added, it was “a bit like Christmas for a fashion history lover.”
Sometimes a small strass was embedded as a period on the labels of William J. Hats. Other labels were folded on the corners, Mr. Branson out in the style of certain couture clothing. “Balenciaga did the same,” he said. “Coco Chanel did the same.”
Just like items from High modem brands, William J. Hats are now owned by museums and other institutions. Those with Mr Cunningham’s designs in their collections are the New York Historical and the Costume institute In the Metropolitan Museum.
“He had a feeling of perfectionism and feeling and style,” said Valerie Paley, a senior vice president and director of the library in the New York Historical, who also has a William J. printing plate and label.
Mr Cunningham’s hats were also sold on websites such as eBay. The site was where Carol Dietz, a retired art director in the New York Times who worked closely, bought a William J. Cloch Hat with a Grosgrain -Lintboog for $ 135 in 2020.
Mrs. Dietz has also stored several feathers from a collection by Mr. Cunningham. “He loved feathers,” she said. The hers are ‘wrapped in paper so that they do not crumble’, she added.
Steven Stolman, a fashion designer and author, said that he had called himself ‘the crazy, crazy Hatter’ at the height of the Millinery career of Mr Cunningham in the 1950s and 60s.
“Every hat had a little wink,” said Mr. Stolman, who wrote the book “Bill Cunningham there” with John Kurdewan, a production artist of the New York Times who worked closely with Mr. Cunningham. Mr Stolman, a former president at Scalamandré, had worked with Mr Macaluso at the textile company and helped facilitate the sale of Mrs. Macaluso’s hats by Freeman’s Hindman.
Mr. Stolman said he could hear Mr. Cunningham, who died in 2016 and said, “How Mahvelous” was it that some of his hats ended up. “But then, in a typical self -removing way,” he added, “Bill would say,” Who would be interested in a bunch of old hats? “”
