Cathy Horyn
This past Fashion Month brought the observing public several highlights: designers Raf Simons for Dior and Hedi Slimane for Saint Laurent made their long-awaited ready to wear debuts; Sharon Stone and her boy toy canoodled all over the Front Rows in Milan, while Lana del Ray looked like the cat who caught the cream seated next to Kate Moss at Mulberry in London. Kristen Stewart came out from hiding to grace us with her presence at Balenciaga in Paris, and JLo brought her daughter whose face read, ‘I’d rather be at Chucky Cheese’, to Chanel. Street style brought us the Russian It-girls and Taylor Tomasi Hill dethroned Anna dello Russo as the most photographed street style muse.
And then there was Cathy.
The New York Times fashion critic Cathy Horyn launched a veritable calamity of epic proportions during New York Fashion Week by using the words “hot dog” to describe Oscar de la Renta in a review, and with that, the drama snowballed as Horyn became the most written about person during Fashion Month.
Oscar de la Renta, a man who has lived through two World Wars, was so offended by this hot dog comment, that he purchased a full page in WWD and retorted that if Horyn could call him a hot dog, then he could call her a hamburger, a “3-day old hamburger” to be precise.
Over the past few years there has been a definite rise from various media portholes drawing attention to the act of bullying. Defined as confidence-lacking, name callers, they are people who are outwardly and purposefully mean to others in a cheaply disguised effort to draw attention to themselves. Cathy Horyn, who is from Ohio, and has been provocatively critiquing fashion for a couple of decades, was officially branded for all to see, a bully by one of fashion’s legendary designers.
Though quick to explain that her largely positive review was misunderstood, and that by writing that “Mr. de la Renta is far more a hot dog than an eminence grise of American fashion”, meant to convey that “he’s a cool guy who’s showing off his tricks,” in the athletic sense, one media savvy person saw an opportunity to draw attention to herself and remind us that she too, had once been wronged by The Big, Bad Cathy Horyn.
Cue Lady Gaga. Turning to her 30 million twitter followers, Gaga tweeted, “Bravo Oscar. Only you would be so chic as to purchase an entire page in WWD, making statements like a good fashion citizen.”
Falling into her lap like pawns, the media was quick to put the tweet into context and remind us that last year, Ms. Horyn had scolded Donatella Versace for dressing Gaga in an archival vintage piece for the singer’s Edge of Glory video. “Be choosier Mrs. Versace”. Advised Cathy Horyn.
At the time, Gaga retaliated through an interview in V magazine writing: “In the age of the Internet, when collections and performances are so accessible to the public and anyone can post a review on Facebook or Twitter, shouldn’t columnists and reviewers, such as Cathy Horyn, employ a more modern and forward approach to criticism, one that separates them from the average individual at home on their laptop?”
Ms. Horyn, who must have enjoyed a private chuckle or two over the whole debacle, went on to watch her long-term partner, former CEO of Liz Claiborne, Art Ortenberg step into the ring with the following open letter to WWD:
“To the Editor:
True, Cathy Horyn is my girlfriend. Nevertheless, I feel it necessary to cudgel Gaga for her badly informed, dumbing-down opinion that an uninformed opinion is as valid as that of a seasoned critic—as though Gaga and Bridget Foley of WWD or David Denby of The New Yorker or Ben Brantley of The New York Times or Brooks Atkinson or Pauline Kael or any professional critic is just another opinion and that Gaga’s vacuous thoughts deserve the same status. Grow up, Gaga.”
These days, it would appear that we are all children of Facebook and when one is Poked, we have learned, to well, Poke back. And as it turns out, when poke comes to shove, shove turns to song, or in Gaga’s case, R-rated rap.
Creative Director Nicola Formichetti who appears incapable of doing a Thierry Mugler show without some kind of presence of his personal benefactor, chose the song: “Cake like GAGA” for his RTW show. Below is a musical outtake.
Gaga: “Ortenberg you can suck my d**k, walk b***h you ain’t Lady Gaga… Cathy Horyn your style ain’t d**k. Walk a mile in these foot-high heels, I run in these you ain’t running s**t. You chew beef, I wear meat – I’m getting fat and so is my bank. From a sold-out world tour, b***h.’”
Naturally, Horyn’s camp kept silent. Gaga’s foul-mouthed tirade bordering on a hissy fit proved Ortenberg’s point beautifully.
The buck should have stopped there, but someone else wanted in on the fight. Enter Hedi Slimane, newly appointed Creative Director of Saint Laurent, Slimane had already made waves when slashing ‘Yves’ from the brand name and moving the studio to his beloved Los Angeles. But he did more than rustle a few feathers when he treated journalists like pariahs by moving them to the back row and leaving fashion critic Cathy Horyn off the list entirely. One can only assume he has never heard the Machiavellian quote, “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.”
Horyn went on to write a lengthy and mostly negative review of Slimane’s debut at Saint Laurent anyway. Much to Slimane’s annoyance, she also turned to the archives and blamed the fact that her invite got lost in the mail because in 2004 she had written that Raf Simons had paved the way for Hedi Slimane’s skinny look. Slimane, who understandably has been under a great deal of stress, rather than going for a massage, or unbuttoning his jeans, laid his feelings out on the table in the form of an open letter that came with all the trimmings: innuendo, personal jabs, and a heavy helping of self-promotion. Where designers might be masters of cloth, they certainly lack the subtleness of seasoned writers when putting pen to paper.
“Miss Horyn is a schoolyard bully and also a little bit of a stand-up comedian.
Insiders argue she is an average writer, and a bit provincial, but I disagree, she did some great things. Her biggest achievement so far is a book about Bill Blass, that I haven’t read. It might be terrific, and I’ll be happy to recommend it, if it helps the sales.
I also often hear that her sense of style is seriously challenged, providing that she is meant to be an authority in the village. This is totally irrelevant, no one has ever asked for her to be an inspiration to others after all, and likely it would never happen anyway.
Besides, and amusingly, her agenda is seriously thick and perfectly predictable. She is a woman on a mission, and this season she is on fire.
Miss Horyn also works for the New York Times, as everyone knows, where conflicts of interest might seem a little out of place and where being partial, or too friendly with the locals might not be an option.
In conclusion, and as far as I’m concerned, she will never get a seat at Saint Laurent, but might get a 2 for 1 at Dior. She should rejoice. I don’t mind critics, but they have to come from a fashion critic, not a publicist in disguise. I am quite mesmerized she did get away with it for so many years.
And by the way come to visit our new website at ysl.com.”
Horyn retorted that this was all “silly nonsense”. Slimane tweeted that she was “Catty” and “an embarrassment”.
The drama ensued.
Cue the Times of London‘s Laura Craik. She also wrote an open letter, directed at Hedi Slimane which sums up this debacle rather nicely:
“I don’t know if it was intentional, but you didn’t make journalists feel very welcome at your show. Some, you didn’t invite at all. Others had to stand, or were given seats so bad they could only see the top half of the models, which made it tricky to report on the clothes. Nobody minded sitting behind Azzedine Alaïa, but that all those glum-looking indie kids in black drainpipes got to see the clothes from the front row seemed a little insulting. I respect that you value your friends so highly, but I don’t respect some of the people on the YSL payroll who were unnecessarily rude. Friends who have met you swear you are a lovely, laid-back bloke, so this seems weird. Because the thing is, you can’t control everything. You just can’t. You can control your brand’s image to the nth degree, and so you should: it worked for Burberry. But you can’t control people’s reactions. And I really hope you don’t want to try. If you were a suit, I wouldn’t expect you to understand that. But you’re not. You’re Hedi Slimane. All the things you seem to love and value—music, fun, sexiness—require freedom. You have yours. I have mine. Without it, we are nothing. So please, don’t ban me from your next show, because I really want to see it. We all do. We like you, even though you treat us like a b***h.”
And on that note, our fashion story comes to an end. Or so we hope. Slimane is not the first designer to fail in his attempt to control the fashion press and won’t be the last. Horyn has proven that you don’t need to be front row to give a good, or bad review of a show, and she has also proven that trying to silence a journalist with the written word, is as effective as taking a water-pistol to a raging fire.
Perhaps the most unfortunate result of all these intertwined circumstances is that the fashion glitterati have played to the general public as the hot-headed, arrogant, and filled to the brim with self-importance bunch that they have always been made out to be; and that no matter the age, or profession, we still feed off schoolyard gossip with the insatiable appetite of a twelve year old.
“Fashion should be fun.” Said Inès de la Fressange. We certainly have been entertained.
