Lady Gaga Trashes Cathy Horyn, Calls Her ‘Negative’ and ‘Predictable’
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Fashion face-off: Lady Gaga vs. style scribe Cathy Horyn
It’s on!
New York Times fashion critic Cathy Horyn appears to have unwittingly started a war of words with Lady Gaga thanks to her June column in which she pronounced the “Edge of Glory video “D.O.A.," said the pop star looked “embalmed in her black Versace harness,” and urged Donatella Versace to “be choosier.”
Now it's Gaga’s turn to lash out. In her latest column for V Magazine, the singer breaks out her poison pen to accuse Horyn and her fellow style pundits for being overly negative.
“Doesn’t the integrity of the critic become compromised when their writings are consistently plagued with negativity,” Gaga writes in a “memorandum" that cc:’s the “On the Runway” critic.
“When the public is no longer surprised or excited by the unpredictability of the writer, but rather has grown to expect the same cynicism from the same cynic? When we can predict the same predictable review from the same predictable reviewer?
“Accomplished creators of fashion and music have a visceral effect on the world, which is consequently why they are publicly distinguished. So why do so many notable critics seem so impervious to the emotion of the work? Why such indifference? Does intellectualism replace feeling? It’s so easy to say something is bad. It’s so easy to write, ‘One star, hated it, worst show of the season.’ It’s much more challenging to reckon with and analyze a work. It requires research, but maybe no one does their research anymore. So my question, V readers, is this: when does the critique or review become insult and not insight? Injury and not intellect?” (How Carrie Bradshaw of her ... )
Gaga also cites “notoriously harsh” reviews as an attack on the “so good, and so precise” designers that she works with, and calls out Horyn specifically.
“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,” she writes.
“Ms. Horyn, the more critical question to ask is: when did the pretense of fashion become more important than its influence on a generation. Why have we decided that one person’s opinion matters more than anyone else’s?”
While we wait for Horyn’s rebuttal, there’s at least one style maven that does pass muster with Gaga: 15-year-old Style Rookie blogger Tavi Gevinson.
“I adore her, and her prodigious and well-written blog is the future of journalism,” Gaga pronounces.
Note to Tavi: You might want to sit this one out.
