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Cathy Horyn’s Jean Shorts Were the Talk of Milan

Photo: Clint Spaulding/Patrick McMullan

To ask Cathy Horyn about her cutoff jean shorts or not to ask her? That was the question on Saturday in Milan (and at the New York shows, two weeks earlier, though she’s been wearing them since the couture season in early summer). I’d heard plenty of people wondering about them since the 3.1 Phillip Lim show, and now they had returned. “What do they mean?” one person asked, like they did that time Anna Wintour skipped out on Milan early. “Do you think Cathy Horyn is trying to make a point with her shorts?”

So in the name of journalism, I went over and asked fashion’s patron saint of #realtalk. “It’s just hot, that’s all,” she said. “They’re comfortable and I’m working.” All of the people around her were also working, yet many were wearing thousands of dollars’ worth of clothing. Did she feel no pressure to participate in that culture? “No, that’s for magazine editors. Plus, the last thing I would want is for anybody to write about my clothes.”

Too late. Sorry, Cathy. We hope you’ll forgive us for applauding your total DGAF attitude in the face of such luxury peer pressure. Such an act of separatism makes a statement, whether you want it to or not.