The premiere of a new documentary, The Times of Bill Cunningham, brought out a who’s who in fashion to the Angelika Film Center: supermodels Pat Cleveland, Carol Alt, Frederique Van Der Wal; the CFDA’s Steven Kolb, Aurora James,  Yigal Azrouël, Jeffrey Banks, and Sachin and Babi Ahluwalia, Gigi Burris, Bethann Hardison, and many more.

The invitations were colored in the same pitch-perfect shade of blue as Cunningham’s signature French worker’s jacket that he always wore on the job.

“Dress for Bill!” the invite read—a nod to one of Cunningham’s favorite subjects, Vogue’s Anna Wintour, who famously said “We all dress for Bill” in a 2002 interview with Cathy Horyn for The New York Times.

Never one to disappoint sartorially, Broadway producer Jordan Roth donned a Pucci jacket and ropes of pearls borrowed from his mother, Tony Award-winning producer Daryl Roth. “I’m doing my best dress for Bill,” he said. “It’s a little street, a little society, and lots of jewels.”

Like many, Roth has vivid memories of flipping through the Times’s Style section to see the sidewalk and society photos Cunningham captured each week. “They were always such a window into this world of lived glamour, lived fashion, and lived creative expression,” he added.

Narrated by Sarah Jessica Parker, the documentary is based on a long-forgotten, not-to-be-missed 1994 interview director Mark Bozek had with the legendary photographer and fashion historian who originated the art of capturing what ordinary and not-so-ordinary people wear IRL.

The story begins with Cunningham discussing his early days as a milliner in the 1950s, fashioning hats for Hollywood’s most illustrious stars, like Marilyn Monroe, Joan Crawford, and Ginger Rogers, sold under the label William J. But by the ‘60s, “hats were out,” so he set out on the streets of Manhattan to discover new de rigueur styles of the day. “I wasn’t getting the answer in fashion shows,” Cunningham says in the film. “I realized I had to look for answers on the streets.”

After the credits rolled, there was a Q&A with Bozek, M·A·C Global Creative Director Drew Elliott, and fashion illustrator Ruben Toledo [the evening was co-hosted by M·A·C, Nordstrom, and CFDA]. Toledo collectively shared Bill-isms that had the room in stitches. Case in point: The time when in the winter of 1971, Broadway froze over and Cunningham responded by spending the entire day photographing people “falling on their asses in all kinds of various disarray.”

“I loved seeing other parts of his personality that were not just a fashion savant kind of guy,” Bozek said to a crowd dressed far too chicly to be seated in a dark theater. “Certainly he was and had an eye for that, but he also had a great sense of humor.”

Toledo, who created the movie poster’s cover art, also recounted the first time he was lensed by Cunningham. He was just 14 or 15 years old, a self-described “bridge and tunnel kid from New Jersey” out on the town with his highschool sweetheart and would-be wife, the late fashion designer Isabel Toledo (whom the documentary is also dedicated to). When the young couple was spotted leaving the club at 4 in the morning, Cunningham chased them down the street on his Schwinn bicycle, camera in hand. “It was just to photograph Isabel and a dress she had made for herself the night before,” Toledo said with a laugh. “But that’s the kind of energy that Bill had.”

Afterward, everyone migrated to Bistrot Leo in Soho for the after-party—and it was the same sort of see-and-be-seen soirée that Cunningham was known to photograph for his society column. In between sips of pink Champagne, Cleveland worked the room in a fantastic crystal-studded House of Mua Mua bomber jacket emblazoned with the phrase “I don’t give a chic” on the back. A few feet away, famed celebrity columnist George Wayne held court in a corner booth. “I remember it like it was yesterday!” he said, recalling the first time Cunningham snapped his picture–it was at a Fashion Institute of Technology exhibition with André Leon Talley. “I don’t remember what I was wearing at the time, but I’ll never, ever forget that moment.”

The best ensemble of the evening undoubtedly went to Susanne Bartsch, the Swiss Miss of New York nightlife, who preened and gleaned for the party photogs in a nude latex catsuit festooned with elaborate ostrich plumes from top to toe. “I can’t really see!” admitted Bartsch, whose eyes glistened with glitter-flecked pink eyeshadow. “But every time I get ready to go out, I ask myself, ‘What would Bill think?’” she said. “We’re still all getting dressed for Bill!”