Cathy Horyn has found herself in a few tiffs with designers over the years, thanks to her sometimes scathing but honest reviews. She famously got into it with Hedi Slimane at Saint Laurent and Oscar de la Renta wrote a shady open letter to her in WWD after he took offense to her calling him a “hot dog” in a review. But in an interview with System magazine, Horyn says that even though she’s pissed off some designers in her time, they don’t always hold it against her. “One of my toughest reviews was for an Oscar [de la Renta] show and it was the one he loved the most,” she said. “Same with Tom Ford. Tom got so upset with me about something… but when I left the Times, a lot of these guys were like, ‘You said things that were terrible, that really hurt me, but you were right!'”
Though Horyn’s honesty can be a bit biting, she says she’s friendly (but not BFF) with a few designers. But if you think her friendliness in any way affects what she writes, you’d be wrong about that. Horyn says that even with those designers she’s cool with, she can’t help but tell them up front what she really thinks of their collections. “Narciso [Rodriguez] and I are very friendly, Raf and I are very friendly, but I’ve called them before and said, ‘I got to tell you this is not my favourite show.'”
[via Business of Fashion]
