Fashion used to be brutal. In 2008, Suzy Menkes devoted much of her International Herald Tribune review of Marc Jacobs’ SS08 collection not to the clothes but to the fact that Jacobs had kept his audience waiting for two hours. “To have a show start two hours late is an insult to the audience,” she wrote. “It is a display of arrogance that should be rejected by anyone who respects their own time.” She even went on to add that “if this is the future of fashion, we are in trouble.” Jacobs would later admit that the criticism stayed with him for years, fuelling the tension between himself and the well-respected British fashion critic. By the time I encountered Menkes’ review in school, presented almost as a historical artefact, it had already passed into legend. Fewer and fewer of us remember a time, particularly in print, when fashion writing was expected to provoke a response rather than carefully avoid one.
Open a fashion magazine — yes, even this one — and you will spot the pattern. Fashion writing has become passive. Not every collection is a masterpiece. Yet here we are, reading about designers who have “explored” or “reimagined” until those words have lost meaning, and “savoir-faire” gets tossed in whenever the vocabulary runs dry. I will admit it: I have played along. Sometimes I even wondered: what happened to the thrill of reading a writer’s actual opinion — about anything? Why even bother writing if all we are offering is a rearranged press kit? Compared with what formerly filled these pages, fashion writing has lost its original purpose. Criticism without flair, judgment swapped for observation. It also tends to share one defining quality: restraint, as though an invisible hand has stopped it just short of saying what it means.
Even as I write this, I can feel that invisible “hand” gripping my keyboard. I dare not name names — I wish I were that brave. Any editor or writer will recognise what I mean: that cold, creeping panic that asks you, “Is it worth the fallout?” After nearly a decade in fashion, I have been conditioned to flinch at the thought of saying anything truly my own. The fear is so baked in that I have built a personal arsenal of neutral adjectives: “considered,” “assured,” “refined.” Those words leap out and block “lazy,” “safe,” and “hollow” every time I am tempted to type them. If you ever spot me using “refined,” just know it probably means I wanted to say something further from it.
Each time I hype myself up with “maybe I should be brave,” I remember what happened to Cathy Horyn — the fashion critic who was famously exiled from Saint Laurent shows after writing a harsh piece criticising the then- creative director Hedi Slimane. And so I come to the more uncomfortable conclusion: no one had to censor me before writing this piece. I had already done it myself. Why? Because the problem is that criticism now comes with consequences, be it small or — in the case of Horyn — very severe ones. But before we get deeper into that, we first need to understand the relationship between media and brands.
You might think the media/brand relationship is simple — so did I. I assumed that the process was something like this: the publication finds a story, the brand supplies the clothes, sometimes financial support, and everyone gets what they want. Like any relationship that looks easy from the outside, you only see the mess once you get inside. These days, editorial coverage often functions less like journalism and more like a service provided to brands — unless you count advertorials as hard-hitting news. Publications are now treated more like glossy advertising than independent voices. Media does not even pretend to stand apart any more. It resembles a megaphone for whatever brand-speak is trending this season — which is funny considering the job of media is to be the messenger.
Some brands may expect supportive coverage in exchange for advertising or partnerships. In that instance, the commercial relationship ties one party (in this case the media) to the fate of the other (the brand), and any form of criticism can therefore be made to look like a failure to honour it. A critical article will then be perceived as a breach of an agreement that never formally existed. As such, if you fail to hold up your end of the bargain, you should be prepared for the consequences.
The problem, however, cannot be placed entirely at the feet of brands. Publications are complicit in constructing this arrangement because many can no longer afford to stand outside it. When advertising, branded content, events, and commercial partnerships support the same editorial operation, independence becomes an expense, much less a principle. A publication may defend an unfavourable review in theory, but by doing so it becomes considerably harder when the company being reviewed is also helping to pay its salaries. As such, the vicious cycle continues: the writer consequently learns to anticipate not only the brand’s displeasure, but is also faced with financial anxiety.
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We can learn from Elias Medini, better known as Lyas. In 2024, he posted a negative take on a show, playing coy about the brand name (everyone guessed it anyway). What did he get for his honesty? According to Medini, someone within the industry later questioned why he had expressed the opinion at all, before suggesting that his criticism might be interpreted as misogyny towards the female designer. He also claimed that employees of the brand had been describing him as biased and misogynistic behind the scenes. Some later speculated that the episode contributed to his departure from Interview Magazine, though that connection is unproven. Even so, it offers a clearer view of what can happen when an opinion is interpreted not as criticism, but as misconduct.
On the other hand, some critics can afford to be outspoken because they have a safety net beneath them. When Horyn was excluded from Saint Laurent shows, it did not end her career, nor did it sever her relationship with fashion publishing. She continues to write for The Cut as its critic-at-large. Others have far less room to move. Some writers avoid criticism because they fear being permanently removed from brand lists, denied access or excluded from the machinery that allows them to do their jobs in the first place. Brenda Weischer’s case is often cited here. After criticising Dior publicly, she later deleted critical posts once she began receiving access to the brand-associated events and shows. Whether that shift was strategic, sincere, or simply the result of proximity is difficult to prove. But it shows how press trips, gifts and invitations can create loyalty without any explicit demand for favourable coverage — though her change in tone has also been interpreted as something closer to compromise.
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Which is why, more recently, anonymity began to look like the only choice we had left. Boring Not Com appeared almost out of nowhere in 2024, sporting a neon-green background and blocks of white text. Conceived as a satirical antidote to Beka Gvishiani’s relentlessly cheerful yet wildly positive Style Not Com, it was praised for clearing through PR-friendly fluff and saying what much of the industry was inhibiting. And, for a time, it worked. Anonymity gave the account the freedom to name failures plainly, question appointments and criticise collections without first calculating what might be lost in return. Its popularity revealed something fashion publishing had been reluctant to admit: there is a whole generation of readers starved of honesty.
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The freedom to speak without consequence however gradually became the freedom to say almost anything. Boring Not Com frequently crossed the line between criticising the work and attacking the person responsible for it. The account publicly called for a newly-appointed creative director to be fired — “MrMcGirr, You’re Fired” — and aggressively dragged along other well-known figures, including Vogue France’s head of editorial content. Recently, the anonymity disappeared. In a report for Puck, investigative fashion journalist Lauren Sherman tracked the account to Rarshan Agyemang, a stylist and creative director who has worked in the industry for nearly two decades.
The revelation exposed the contradiction at the centre of Boring Not Com. Anonymity had succeeded where mainstream fashion media had failed, and made criticism feel possible again. It also removed theaccountability that ought to bind criticism to judgment. Weischer puts it more bluntly — maybe too bluntly — in an op-ed published in i-D: “Anon users will not accept the reality of the media landscape we live in; it’s not about who says it most eloquently, it’s about who screams the loudest.” And there is some truth in that. Fashion criticism may not have disappeared so much as migrating towards a form better suited for theInternet, where the sharpest judgment is not always the most considered one.
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We must remember that social platforms reward opinions that can be understood and shared almostinstantly. “This collection fails” travels more efficiently than a paragraph that beats around the bush explaining where, how and why it does. Critics working online are therefore subjected to a different kind of editorial pressure: the pressure to please brands and the pressure to satisfy an algorithm that favours reaction. It is a strange convergence, where traditional publications soften judgment to protect access, while digital criticism exaggerates it to secure attention. One says too little; the other is encouraged to say too much.
I understand the appeal of anonymity just as much as Boring Not Com. Believe me, I have even considered slapping a fake name on this piece — revealing this much already threatens my own autonomy. But truthfully, wanting to go anonymous is, for me, just wanting a shortcut. It is easier to be savage when you are wearing a mask. Anonymity would have spared me the harder work of choosing precise examples, standing behind them and accepting that even a carefully formed judgment can hurt someone or damage a relationship. As such, I realised that the invisible hand has not magically disappeared simply because I have identified it. Calling it out is the first step to prying its fingers loose. So the question shifts: can fashion make space for criticism that is both honest and responsible? Or are we stuck picking between two bad options — named writers who cannot say what they mean, and anonymous ones who can say anything but never have to answer for it? Neither position sounds healthy to me.
The choice should not have to be between compromised decorum and anonymous cruelty. Other industries have already accepted that commerce and criticism can occupy the same ecosystem. Film studios may dislike bad reviews and occasionally retaliate against them, but the industry still broadly recognises criticism as part of the arrangement rather than an automatic betrayal of it. Because in that world, reviewers may dislike the direction, performances, or script without being accused of undermining cinema itself. And when you put that into perspective with fashion, it starts to make the witch hunt for criticising a bunch of clothes and accessories sound a little extreme.
Consider Vincent Gallo’s The Brown Bunny. The film was savaged after its 2003 Cannes premiere, most famously by Roger Ebert, one of the most influential film critics in America at the time. Ebert disregarded it as tedious, amateurish and narcissistic. Gallo responded with a public feud, but eventually returned to the editing room and removed 26 minutes of the run-time before its theatrical release. Ebert later reviewed the revised version positively, awarding it three out of four stars and arguing that the film’s purpose had finally emerged through the tighter edit.
The critic identified what had failed and acknowledged the difference after the filmmaker improved it. Yet, the work was not inherently destroyed by the criticism it received — only that it demanded more from it. The same goes for having access. Losing it does not necessarily make criticism impossible. In 2017, the Walt Disney Company barred the Los Angeles Times from advance screenings after the newspaper published an investigation into Disney’s business ties and political influence in Anaheim. The paper made the ban public. Major critics’ groups responded by disqualifying Disney films from their year-end awards until the restriction was lifted. Faced with collective pressure, Disney eventually reversed its decision. Writing won, while a big corporation retracted its actions.
There is a lesson here, and it is not just “never piss off Disney.” Writers are easy to pick off when access is aprivilege rather than a right. If publications stand together, brands are unable to silence one without risking the wrath of the whole crew. Criticism exists for a reason: to set standards, maybe to keep receipts, and perhaps to remind everyone that influence comes with scrutiny. No one — be it a designer, editor, critic, or publication — is immune to failure. Words can alter how work is understood and, occasionally, how it ismade. Preventing criticism is not protecting the work. In fact, it is to deny it the opportunity to become better.
Which brings me back to Marc Jacobs. Suzy Menkes’ review did not destroy him. What she wrote merely angered him. Maybe it even stayed with him and became part of the historical record surrounding his work. The fact that it triggered a reaction was evidence that it had registered in him. And in the end, Menkes was right. Keeping an audience waiting for two hours was disrespectful, particularly when one designer’s delay disrupted the schedules of an entire industry.
Still, none of these protections would make criticism consequence-free. Should critics be called out for lazy, personal, or just plain bad takes? Absolutely. But accountability must run in both directions. Writers should be expected to defend what they publish and brands should be expected to tolerate judgments that are beyond their control.
The point of this story was never to turn every article I write into my own exercise in public execution, or to unleash my keyboard on every designer who makes a misstep. I am asking for the imbalance between honesty and relationships to be corrected. Otherwise, criticism becomes indistinguishable from promotion, and a writer becomes useful only for repeating what the brand has already said. An old editor once said honesty can sound like an unchecked teenager just saying whatever pops into their head. I laughed at that — until I realised, maybe that editor was right. But here is the thing: I am not a teenager, and I am definitely not unchecked. I am simply a fashion writer working within a faulty system.
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