{"id":113078,"date":"2025-08-02T13:33:14","date_gmt":"2025-08-02T13:33:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/113078\/"},"modified":"2025-08-02T13:33:14","modified_gmt":"2025-08-02T13:33:14","slug":"how-are-we-making-the-upper-west-side-look","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/113078\/","title":{"rendered":"How Are We Making the Upper West Side Look?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Photograph by Yvonne V\u00e1vra.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong>by Yvonne V<\/strong>\u00e1vra<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Upper West Side is about to receive a real treasure\u2014one created by a New York treasure, at that. It\u2019s nothing less than the city\u2019s own spark, captured and carefully tucked away by the late Bill Cunningham, the legendary New York Times fashion photographer. Now, a vault of that very spark is being opened: tens of thousands of his photographs, negatives, and pieces of memorabilia will find a permanent home at the New York Historical on Central Park West.<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"Bill Cunningham. Photograph via Wikimedia Commons.<\/p>\n

For decades, until his death at 87 in 2016, Cunningham roamed the city on his bike, documenting what people wore as they lived out their own versions of New York life. His work captures the looks people created for themselves, and the way they collectively dressed the city. To Cunningham, fashion was \u201carmor to survive the reality of everyday life,\u201d as he said in the 2010 documentary Bill Cunningham New York. \u201cI don\u2019t think you could do away with it; it would be like doing away with civilization.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now we get to see the beauty Cunningham captured at the New York Historical. But what about outside the museum? How are we making the UWS look?<\/p>\n

\"\"Photograph by Yvonne V\u00e1vra.<\/p>\n

Well\u2026 how do I put this kindly? When you spot someone with breathtaking style on the Upper West Side, your first thought might be: visiting, probably. Don\u2019t throw your coffee at me\u2014I say this with love, as one of us! We\u2019re looking good, no question. Have you seen us? Glorious. I just mean, style-wise, the typical Upper West Sider often looks like they\u2019ve got other things on their mind. I\u2019m talking about a typical one, not you! But let\u2019s be honest, a stunning outfit that triggers a double take and another glance back over your shoulder? It\u2019s rare. To sum up the pickle I\u2019ve written myself into: on your average Tuesday afternoon, you don\u2019t see much that would\u2019ve made Cunningham slam the brakes on his bike.<\/p>\n

The mornings can be mind-blowing. Upper West Side dogs on their first walks of the day are accompanied by humans who sometimes look like they got dressed mid-fall\u2014in whatever clothing put up the least resistance. It\u2019s giving teen angst, a grown-up edition. I\u2019ve contributed more than once, say, by showing up to the park with my shirt inside out, the washing instructions flapping in the wind like a price tag. Definitely on sale. Good thing dogs don\u2019t judge.<\/p>\n

\"\"Charivari. Photograph by Stephen Harmon.<\/p>\n

That said, the Upper West Side does have style in its DNA. I mean, this is the neighborhood that gave the world Lady Gaga! It was here that a small shop on 85th and Broadway\u2014opened in 1967 by single UWS mom Selma Weiser\u2014grew into a boutique empire that reshaped the fashion scene in New York and beyond. Charivari, the name Weiser chose for her store, taken from the French word for \u2018uproar\u2019, made the Upper West Side a hotbed for cutting-edge style, thanks to her eye for avant-garde designs and her support of emerging talent. Marc Jacobs got his start here as a stock boy, and Yohji Yamamoto and countless other designers have Weiser to thank for their breakthrough in the US. Charivari was \u201cPlanet Cool\u201d, as former employee Kerry Harris put it in the documentary Charivari: A Fashion Uproar. At its peak, Charivari had multiple locations across the neighborhood and made the Upper West Side the place where the cool people went to get dressed.<\/p>\n

\"\"Photograph by Yvonne V\u00e1vra.<\/p>\n

Charivari\u2019s last store closed in 1998, but the Upper West Side had another style icon holding court since the \u201960s. At Off Broadway Boutique, on 72nd Street between Broadway and Columbus, Lynn Dell Cohen sold everything needed to, as she put it, \u201cdress for the theater of our lives.\u201d Sensational ensembles and every imaginable accessory to match\u2014really, everything you could dream of, including hats so dramatic, sculptures might be a better word. But arguably the most fabulous thing in the store was Lynn Dell herself. Until her death in 2015,<\/a> she brought out the inner glamour of everyone who walked through the door.<\/p>\n

\"\"Photograph by Yvonne V\u00e1vra.<\/p>\n

Lynn Dell became a style icon well beyond her boutique. She was a regular on Advanced Style<\/a>, the blog by Ari Seth Cohen that celebrates fabulously dressed older women\u2014in fact, many Upper West Siders have been featured there. Maybe style really is everywhere in the neighborhood, and I just don\u2019t always know how to look.<\/p>\n

\"\"Photograph by Yvonne V\u00e1vra.<\/p>\n

Because here\u2019s the thing: Bill Cunningham wore the same blue work jacket every day. He didn\u2019t draw attention\u2014he paid it. He found endless joy watching the fashion show unfold on the streets. Well, these are our streets, and this is our show. Bill taught us to look, and when we do so with his kind of curiosity, we might see the beauty of someone dressed exactly for the day they\u2019re having. There they are: our neighbors, making it through the theater of their lives, looking the way they do. And we get to share that little scene with them. That\u2019s quite extraordinary\u2014definitely worth hitting the brakes for.<\/p>\n

\"\"Photograph by Yvonne V\u00e1vra.<\/p>\n

Yvonne V\u00e1vra is a magazine writer and author of the German book 111 Gr\u00fcnde New York zu lieben (111 Reasons to Love New York). Born a Berliner but an aspiring Upper West Sider since the 1990s (thanks, Nora Ephron), she came to New York in 2010 and seven years later made her Upper West Side dreams come true. She\u2019s been obsessively walking the neighborhood ever since.<\/p>\n

Subscribe to West Side Rag\u2019s FREE email newsletter\u00a0here<\/a>. And you can Support the Rag\u00a0here.<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Photograph by Yvonne V\u00e1vra. \u00a0by Yvonne V\u00e1vra The Upper West Side is about to receive a real treasure\u2014one…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":113079,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[648,1032,1033,171,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-113078","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-and-design","10":"tag-design","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-united-states","13":"tag-unitedstates","14":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114959431022055194","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113078","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=113078"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113078\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/113079"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=113078"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=113078"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=113078"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}