Lady Gaga released her latest "Memorandum" column for V magazine today and HOLY MARY MOTHER MONSTER OF GAWWWWD is it a DOOZY. Entitled "Extreme Critic Fundamentalism," she manages to not only praise internet style wunderkind Tavi Gevinsonas being the future of fashion journalism but also manages to SLAM (and by slam we mean with the verbal intensity of a 50-BLADE SAMURAI SWORD) the head fashion critic at the—GASP—New York Times (which is the golden temple of journalism, the Enchanted Kingdom of the written word, its head critic the high priestess of front row criticism). This is MAYJAH, people. When Gaga speaks, types, tweets, or pontificates, MILLIONS of people listen and spread the word. We're not kidding when we type this (and, really, we're typing so fast with beads of style sweat rolling off our temples at the crazy amazingness of this latest missive), but we may have just witnessed a GLOBAL SHIFT in the way fashion journalism operates from this point forward. May angry bolts of journalistic lightning not strike me dead as I type this, but IS FASHION CRITICISM OVER?
According to Gaga, fashion criticism needs to CHANGE. Frankly, it's become staid, boring, and too intellectual; something that doesn't appeal to a younger generation. The backstory on this whole situation is that Times critic Cathy Horyn criticized the fashion in Gaga's "Born This Way" video, stating that "she looked embalmed in the black Versace harness" and that Donatella Versace should choose someone else other than Gaga to wear her clothes. (Oh no you DIDN'T, Cathy H. Them's FIGHTIN' WORDS!) In her column for V, Gaga responded by saying, "It's so easy to say something is bad. It's so easy to write...hated it," and goes on to compare fashion criticism to high school, saying that it's the hurtful equivalent to "being given a spanking with a ruler by an old nun." (SN-AP! Or should we say SMACKDOWN?)
She goes on to say that she ADORES Tavi's maverick website, The Style Rookie, saying that the "prodigious and well-written blog is the future of journalism." OK, did you just feel the fashion axis SHIFT MASSIVELY with that statement? We did! (Incidentally, Tavi will have a spinoff site debuting this coming Monday, Sept. 5, in the form of a new online teen mag called Rookie.) Closing out her article, Mother Monster asks why we should "give the elephant in the room a peanut if it has already snapped its trunk" at us, saying that the "peanut was dead on arrival." By this, we assume she means that the nature of fashion criticism is intended to skewer artists who are merely working hard to put the feeling of their creativity on the backs of those who want to purchase their vision. She goes on to applaud the many designers she works with closely (no doubt including collaborator Nicola Formichetti, who will open an INSANE-looking pop-up shop during Fashion Week). Then, the pièce de résistance, Gaga says that fashion's hierarchy "is embalmed," (take that, CRITICS), no longer modern, AND currently irrelevant. With that declaration alone, we think she just started a REVOLUTION.
{via V magazine}
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