Cathy Horyn
Will Say
It To
Your Face

I always knew I wanted to be a journalist. In that sense my path was easy. My father was a journalist, and he was a wonderful writer; I still have some of his clips. I started at the Virginian Pilot and sat next to the fashion writer, Cammy Sessa. One day I saw an ad for a fashion writer at a Detroit paper that read, Fashion writer: good reporting, good writing, no fashion experience necessary. I went with terrible clothing. I had no idea about any of that. I probably still don’t know anything about that. But there were great retailers there, and I learned a lot. I stayed there until the summer of 1990, when I went to the Washington Post, where you really could write with a point of view.

A few years later I met Graydon Carter, and he asked me to come work with him. Then in 1997, The New York Times called. Amy Spindler was their fashion critic and a good friend of mine—we used to share a car together between shows in Milan, and I thought she was very feisty. She wanted to try different kinds of writing, and the Times was the place I wanted to be.­­­

I was surrounded by good mentors. The best advice my father ever gave me was: you should consider cutting your copy by fifty percent. Not because he felt like everything was too long, but as an exercise to get to the point. I think I was very aware of that—how to get into a story quickly, clearly, and move on.

Digital does loosen the language. I started the On The Runway blog at the Times in 2005, and I had no idea what I was going to do with a blog. Very quickly we developed this community of people, thirty or forty regular readers, names that I would recognize. It was challenging, to keep up with that conversation. I remember being home one day and someone asked me what Azzedine Alaïa’s studio was like. I wrote 1500 words, like a stream of consciousness. People appreciated that it wasn’t so structured.

I’m sure if I went back and looked at the copy I’d be like, I wrote that much detail about Ungaro? The writers then were talking to a devoted and sophisticated readership. As the whole digital thing opened up—and with it, social media—I became aware that I had shifted too much into the atmosphere. I would revolt and go back into the construction of clothes. You go back and forth when you’ve covered the same topic for a long time. Anyone reading your writing over a long period would find inconsistencies, but I think we always feel differently; fashion is about change, and wanting to escape tedium. The same is true of writing.

It’s a turning point, I think, for so many reasons. We don’t have a younger generation of designers who have the kind of creativity we saw in the twentieth century and in the early twenty-first. It’s so driven by profile and big brand experience, but without a sense of risk. I think the audience doesn’t have that quality of risk either. We live in a time where people want to be casual. They want certain sneakers or certain handbags. But there’s a breakdown in the entire chain—without designers taking the risks, you don’t have retailers who can explain risks to their customers, or magazines who can describe it to their readers.

I certainly believe in an evolutionary cycle, and it’s important to remember that the history of fashion is only 700 years old. I think it’s a long-term problem because the industry has always been influenced by a handful of people. Karl Lagerfeld used to say to me: it only takes two or three people a decade to make the thing move. We don’t have that now. Maybe we will, fifty years from now.

It’s funny, around the time of the recession, everyone was very nervous. This was coinciding with the beginning of social media. I remember talking to François-Henri Pinault and telling him he should make individual blogs for each of his houses. And he was like: why? Now when I look back on it, they’ve done that, but on Instagram, and not nearly to the extent they could.

I don’t want to be an entrepreneur, but I like speculating. I like to fantasize plots about other people. That’s why I was talking to Pinault. I remember telling Tom Ford once that he should do these spartan, sunny, little soft-porn movies, all the products embedded into a witty story with Billy Wilder-style dialogue. I was basically telling them to bypass the media.

As a writer, you can certainly immerse yourself in the field. There’s a natural relationship between artists and critics, and often it’s adversarial. I think critics are very curious about the creative process, but fashion is also a complicated business. That’s why great fashion designers often have partners who handle the business: to keep two worlds. The difference is that other art forms don’t have diffusion lines.

As a journalist, I always felt like I wore two hats. By the time I got to the Post, I could just walk into a designer’s office. I would go to Oscar de la Renta or Bill Blass. It was a dream, in hindsight. A lot of the time I wanted to talk to the business partners rather than the designers because I learned as much—in some cases, more—about the work. There were times when I wrote a straight reported piece or times I went in as a critic, but I always had knowledge of both sides.

To be honest, Haley, I always wish I knew more fashion history. It’s incredibly helpful to know what was happening in the 18th century. Everything is less spontaneous now. You don’t have the same access. Karl was the last person who had an open door to a fair number of journalists. Now you gotta make an appointment, the PR person wants to be there, sound bites are all ready. I don’t like to disparage the designers because I know too many people are asking for their time, but it does create a more manufactured sense.

Puzzling and funny. Back when, let’s say, Armani banned me, I remember walking into the Gucci show and all these reporters asking for comment. I didn’t even know yet.

Sometimes I think they’re just wagging the dog a little bit. Certain designers like to blow off steam. I like that version better, when they just say it to your face. Oscar was like that, Donatella Versace is like that—all the obvious people. I’ve had designers call me and scream, but then they’re nice to me the next day. They still invite me to their shows. I won’t say it in print unless I’d say it to their face. I always stood my ground.

“Fashion critic” is a relatively new concept. Fashion writers are not. You have them in the 1800s, and then the editors of the twentieth century who became very influential. I think that was the tradition for a long time, an editor bringing the designer’s vision to the world. Then there are the English critics of the early twentieth century; I think of Kennedy Fraser at the New Yorker as putting a real stamp on the form, with a wonderful sense of humor and language and history. But fashion writers were not really called critics. Amy Spindler was the first at the Times, and she really lobbied for it. In the 90s, there were more critical pieces; I think we all felt the same way, that we wanted to break this industry down as a sociological phenomenon and with a straight review.

I do. Amy was so fierce about that. She hated people lying to her, fashion executives especially. I do feel like I wag my finger at so many people. The fun reviews are either when you hate a collection or love a collection, you know? And you can write with as much passion and vigor. You want to show to the reader why it matters. And I think in the absence of creative passion, and the absence of people doing very challenging, weird work, you have less to argue with. Maybe that’s a problem that’s always existed. Maybe you had people who looked at Courreges in the sixties and said this is amazing, and then fans of Chanel would say are you crazy? I’m looking at what our standards should be. I think we should ask: is that going to move the needle?

Cut your copy by fifty percent.