Pedestrian recently caught up with world-renowned fashion publicist Kelly Cutrone at Gideon’s Sydney flagship launch earlier this week. They say fashion is a cutthroat industry and Cutrone is proof that only the tough make it out on top. Let’s just say she’s not a lady you want to mess with. Someone should have informed the “horrible woman” (Daily Telegraph columnist Ros Reines) before publishing an article suggesting Cutrone was reimbursed for her trip Down Under.
“It’s total bullshit,” Cutrone tells us, denying the speculation. “A lot of publicists would be like ‘ooh, somebody from The Daily Telegraph said bad things about me but I have to be nice to them’. I don’t give a fuck! You want to come out and do that with me it’s like, ‘okay well do it, but it takes two to tango’,” she says. “I wasn’t paid one dime to come here… I just wanted to,” she explains, adding that last year a company offered her $65,000 to attend Rosemount Australia Fashion Week but she couldn’t because of her schedule. “If you want to take a shot at me like I’m some kind of ‘martyr’ extorting money out of my clients, it’s like, ‘hit the road, bitch!”
Last Tuesday Reines responded to renewed interest in a four year old feud between Cutrone and then-SMH fashion reporter Patty Huntingon, tweeting “thought it was hilarious coming from a mouth who arrives biz class with entourage thks 2 Gideon.” Cutrone famously blacklisted Huntington (a highly respected Sydney based fashion reporter and custodian of Frockwriter) from a number of New York Fashion Week shows in 2006 then re-flamed the fire in an interview with Sassi Sam earlier this week, saying Huntington “put the “r”in rude”. Cutrone still hasn’t forgotten that day. “We were at a fashion show… I saw she was really hot, with all her furs and other things, so I let her inside to be nice. I was letting major media in – The New York Times, you know – and there was this one woman that thought she was on par… Then one of my colleagues was like, ‘oh my god, she’s crazy! She doesn’t like any of our clients in Australia.’ So I was like, ‘we’re gonna go at it’,” she told us. It was on, at least according to Cutrone. Huntington tweeted last week, “you’d figure 4 yrs later she’d bury the hatchet. but apparently not.” Four years is a long time.
As the founder of People’s Revolution, we also wondered how Cutrone would’ve handled the Galliano anti-Semitism incident if he was one of her clients. She would release an immediate public apology, which she says would go a little like this: “I’m really sorry. I had too much to drink… In my conscious mind I do not consider myself to be somebody who dislikes any race or religion. If this is something that exists in my subconscious I promise you I’m going to have a look into it because I don’t want you to think I’m racist [when] I’ve spent my whole life bringing beauty into the world.” We can see why she’s considered one of the best in the business.
Words By Ingrid Kesa
