It all started when Oscar de la Renta took out a one-page ad in WWD calling Cathy Horyn of The New York Times a “stale three-day-old hamburger.” Next, Hedi Slimane tweeted out another open letter (seemingly designed on Microsoft Paint) to Horyn. Then, Laura Craik of The Times of London wrote her own letter to Hedi Slimane, asking him to please stop acting crazy. As they say in fashion, three’s a trend.
From Craik’s letter to Slimane:
“Because the thing is, you can’t control everything. You just can’t … 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 bitch.”
Even though Slimane hasn’t (yet?) written a second open letter in response, it appears, based on his Twitter feed, he’s still feeling that sore, bitter Open Letter spirit.
Despite everyone’s good advice to be quiet, put his head down, and just do his job really well, the new Saint Laurent designer wants a fight; even though Horyn refused to engage his criticisms and wouldn’t bite when WWD asked for comment (“It’s just silly nonsense,” was all she said), Slimane won’t back down.
Last night he sent out two Tweets:
The perfect integrity of the NewYork Times, and its writers, is not precisely “just silly nonsense.”
What is a “silly nonsense” to me is Catty Horyn still singing her tired bias tune for the nyt. This is an embarrassment for the newspaper.
Oh yes, The New York Times is precisely the party which should be most embarassed in all this.
Image via Hedi Slimane’s Twitter
