They are two thick, cardboard-bound books, their pages yellowed with age, their covers cracked and peeling. Between the two of them, they tell the story of 20 or so years in the life and work of William J., the society lady’s hat maker who was — in the words of one of his own advertisements — “The wildest! The maddest! The most fabulous!!!”

William J. is better known to history as Bill Cunningham, the self-effacing photographer and documentarian of style who documented generations of New York fashions from his regular perch on the corner of Fifth Avenue and 57th Street for the “On the Street” column of The New York Times. But for decades before that, as a milliner, he catered to Jackie Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe, Jayne Mansfield and Josephine Baker.

As one undated newspaper article put it: “Beach hats are his meat and fish are his décor. Lobsters, octupi [sic] and other denizens of the deep sit whimsically on his chapeaux. Twenty-seven years old and Harvard-educated, William J. is the newcomer who startled millinery circles with his fruit and vegetable collection of beach hats last year.” (Never mind that he dropped out of Harvard within months, instead seeking his fortune in New York.)