PR Legend Kelly Cutrone Is the Dominatrix of NYFW

On the eve of New York Fashion Week, Kelly Cutrone, the PR maverick and reality star known for her quick wit and no bullshit attitude, gave our senior editor Taylore Scarabelli a lesson on front row politics and fashion industry faux pas. 

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TAYLORE SCARABELLI: For the kids who are reading who don’t know, though I think most of them do, I’m speaking with New York City PR legend Kelly Cutrone. This is your number what fashion week?

KELLY CUTRONE: Oh my god. I started in 1995, so let’s do the math. 1995 to 2000 is five years plus 23—

SCARABELLI: Let’s call it a hundred.

CUTRONE: Most of my contemporaries have either gone to swim with dolphins, made maple syrup candy, been kicked out, OD’ed, or died. So you only have a few of us left, but I’m still here.

SCARABELLI: She’s still legendary. I want to ask you, how do you prep physically, emotionally, and spiritually for fashion week?

CUTRONE: There’s no way to be fully prepared. You know that something is always going to go wrong, but you can’t anticipate that and you don’t want to bring that toward you. But there are some rules, like not going out too late, not getting regularly wasted, stepping outside, getting air. It’s really, really hard. My rule is that I don’t make any major decisions about my private life or my business or my clients during this time, and I let people know that it could be dangerous to be in my field because the amount of energy that’s floating through the office and through my body on any given day is way more than one human being can actually handle. You want to make sure you’re not being reactive all the time. 

SCARABELLI: You’re just doing your job. As an editor, I feel like I constantly have 5 million things that I have to do, but for you, I think it’s 10 times that.

CUTRONE: We keep a lot of lists but this year my team is really small. I’m doing everything with four or five people. That doesn’t include the check-in people, but all of the interview requests, pre-interview requests, post-interview requests, celebrities, fake celebrities, fake-ass fucking people who think they’re major, who aren’t. And I feel now that it’s my job to tighten up the reins a little bit and say, “Sorry, I know you think you’re in the fashion business because you have 2 million followers on TikTok, but you’re not. You’re a little kid from Laguna Beach or Orlando, Florida who has some kind of great skill with getting attention on the internet, but that doesn’t make you a fashion influencer.”

SCARABELLI: Who’s more important in 2023, the editors or the fashion influencers?

CUTRONE: The editors, because at least they’re interested in the topic that they’re writing about. A lot of the influencers are doing things in a super fly-by-night way, and there’s more to the fashion business than how many followers you have on Instagram. Louis Vuitton doesn’t wake up saying, “I wonder what those kids are doing.” The business starts with great design and storytelling, and really good distribution and production. But 70% of business in the United States is still being done in brick-and-mortar stores. So if you’re selling Crocs, get a hundred influencers and have them talk about why orange is the hot new color. That makes total sense. But influencers, for me, are an end game.

SCARABELLI: There’s such a contrast between top-down taste making and bottom-up taste making. And I think you have an interest in holding onto the influence that the media held in the past, but it is a bit of a mess now.

CUTRONE: And it’s a mess of people. A lot of PR companies and a lot of brands are running around trying to be everything to everyone, and that’s not how we do things at People’s Revolution. We take our brands one by one. Tomorrow night I’m working with Cult of Individuality and we’re going to do a photo shoot with the Cobra Snake. Then I’m doing Custo Barcelona, who’s an old school legend. I have Private Policy, which is a huge show on Sunday with a killer front row. And then I’ve got Luis de Javier, and the casting is crazy. We have Julia Fox opening the show. Lourdes Leon is walking, who I love, and Jemima Kirke. [Calls to someone off-camera] By the way, remind me to reach out about Jemima Kirke’s measurements. 

SCARABELLI: I have to say that Custo invite really threw me. I have a bunch of his old stuff.

CUTRONE: He’s so nice. I represented Paco Rabanne for a long, long, long time and he just passed away a week ago. I feel like now god gave me two new Spanish designers to replace Paco because I have Luis and Custo. The clothes are great. 

SCARABELLI: I can’t wait to see. I wonder what you think is the biggest difference between New York Fashion Week before Instagram, when people were still going to Bryant Park, and now. 

CUTRONE: Fashion Week is private. We have no obligation to include anybody. Just because I know you, doesn’t mean you’re getting an invite to my wedding, and that’s the same thing for Fashion Week. The way it used to be was that the fashion shows actually served a real purpose. Buyers used to come and buy collections, and the press would come and review the collection. For the most part, people knew what they were talking about. People like Suzy Menkes, Terry Agins, Robin Givhan, Booth Moore, Vanessa Friedman, Sally Singer, Mark Holgate, Ray Jones, and Hillary Alexander, who just passed away. 

SCARABELLI: And André Leon Talley.

CUTRONE: He didn’t like me after I got on Top Model. It wasn’t my fault that I replaced him. But I’ll tell you a really funny story. There was one season when ALT would only sit in the third row. He was like, “I’m too famous and I’m distracting from the clothes, and so I’m going to do a service to the designers.” Then another season, André would only sit backstage, which was genius, and he would ask for a couch to be brought in. He was pretty funny. He always did something crazy and inconvenient. If you were a publicist, you had to be on the lookout.

SCARABELLI: In a way, he was one of the original influencer editors.

CUTRONE: Probably. Hamish was for sure. Michael Roberts was for sure. Isabella Blow, Dianne Brill. There’s a lot of those.

SCARABELLI: I have a theory now that a lot of fashion magazines are hiring writers who can’t write, or who aren’t that smart, because they don’t want them to say anything negative. There’s a handful of great fashion journalists, but it’s such a different time. There’s no criticism. 

CUTRONE: There’s no criticism at all. But I think Suzy Menkes—want a funny story about her? I did Jeremy Scott for 15 years, and one year somebody from the press office in-house at AEFFE at Moschino had put her next to Kanye. He was really late, and all the cameras were going crazy on her when he arrived. She stood up, and she said, “I’ll either be moved in this very instance, or I’d be very happy to leave.” That was the beginning of the hoopla when suddenly more eyes were on the front row than on the runway, and the old guard was not wanting it. But now it’s the way the Fashion Weeks work, it’s about trying to take that noise and turn it into business. 

SCARABELLI: Do you feel like you have any control over the message now?

CUTRONE: We do because the message is in the clothes. That’s where the power is. What a bunch of people are saying doesn’t matter that much. There’s some kind of a genetic storytelling trait that goes beyond tailoring, like Private Policy’s focus on gender. And then Luis—we’re calling it the Doom and Dom Show. It’s all bondage and porn and romantic, noir, nighttime looks. I wanted to hire dominatrixes to do the check-in.

SCARABELLI: You should.

CUTRONE: I know, because Julia [Fox] runs with all these girls who are actually pros, and I thought it would be a funny take on PR tricks to have everybody in corsets. You could be a good dominatrix. You can be a check-in person at a show, see how you like it.

SCARABELLI: You’re going to put me to work? Oh my god.

CUTRONE: We’re going to have you dominate the audience.

SCARABELLI: That brings me to my next question. Do you think there are more crashers these days? I know last season people were posting invitations on TikTok.

CUTRONE: I only care about my first two rows. If a bunch of crashers get in that show that really shouldn’t be there, or they’re rude or whatever, that’s on me. One year I had a show with Chado Ralph Rucci, this was on Kell on Earth, and all the monitors went down. Even though it wasn’t my fault, I got fired. It was the same thing with Yigal Azrouël. Ashley Dupré, who was the call girl who infamously slept with Eliot Spitzer—I was going to introduce her to Pedro Almodóvar and I asked her to come to this other show at three, and she ended up coming to Gal’s show and got her picture taken. When Yigal found out she was there, he brutally fired me. Women’s Wear Daily called and they were like, “Do you have a comment about this?” And I was like, “Yeah, we’re all hookers in one way or another. I’m standing behind her.”

SCARABELLI: I know you have a reputation, but I was watching that episode last night and I was like, “Kelly’s like a real one. She stands up for what she believes in.”

CUTRONE: People don’t like women who speak up for themselves. As soon as a woman is exerting herself autonomously, making her own money, calling the shots, she’s instantly a bitch. People like women who are quiet, and pretty, and funny, and agreeable, and soft-spoken. But that’s not how it works in the wild kingdom of mother nature. I wanted to make my own money and call the shots because I didn’t want to get stuck in a situation where I had to date a guy to get a Birkin bag. I could have sex with who I wanted. I think that’s real freedom. I see so many women that are in bondage of the choices that they made. Did I take it a little far? Maybe. But you know what? It’s really hard when you’re a woman trying to make your own way in this world.

SCARABELLI: Right.

CUTRONE: I have billions of dollars of responsibility and dreams on my shoulder. What am I supposed to do? “Oh, hi, excuse me, the show’s about to start in four minutes, but if you don’t mind, could you please get up?” No. This person already fucking stole the seat. And let me tell you something, people in the fashion industry, they’re struggling. It might look saucy and fun, but it is a very, very, very tough business. All of us are struggling to get ahead. I’m not there to make friends. I’m there to make a fashion show, and if somebody wants to get in the middle of that, I’ll take them out. I have no problem with it.

SCARABELLI: And in fashion, like in magazines and PR, it’s very hierarchical. I’ve been yelled at, I’ve cried. You have to pay your dues. You have to be the underling, and you have to work your way up.

CUTRONE: And it’s never going to change. I’m not your mom, it’s not fashion camp. I’m here, I’m running a multimillion dollar business. This isn’t a joke. And guess what? I am the boss. I just fired somebody two days ago who was 18. I’d ask her to do something and she goes, “Well, I was thinking that this is what you should do.” And I’m like, “Did I ask you to think for me? No, I asked you to assist me. And are you doing that? No.” 

TAYLORE SCARABELLI: I was going to ask you, when’s the last time you made someone cry, but I think I know the answer.

CUTRONE: I don’t make anybody cry. They make themselves cry. I’m not mean to people. This is a business. And if you’re crying, then you’re probably in the wrong place, because this is a high-stress environment. This is the fashion industry. It’s the number one highest risk investment business in the world. It’s not about only making people look good. 

SCARABELLI: Right.

CUTRONE: I’ve opened the doors for so many people. I have always hired kids from the middle of nowhere, kids who didn’t finish high school, kids of every race, every gender, perspective. People’s Revolution, by being on TV and especially on MTV, brought this world to a whole new group of people. In my DMs all I get all day long is like, “Oh my god, I saw you on The Hills when I was 15. I never saw a woman call shots like that. Now I own six hair salons in Montreal.” My old assistant, she’s the head of Kim Kardashian’s company right now. There’s hundreds of kids that have come through People’s Revolution that are now major players globally. It’s like going to a great college or becoming like a Navy Seal. Is it easy? No. But guess what? It’s the business.

SCARABELLI: There’s a whole new generation of kids discovering you right now. The Hills is streaming on Netflix. And if you look up your name on TikTok, there’s like endless reels and clips of you reading people. The kids love it. 

CUTRONE: I’m not on TikTok. Maybe I should be.

SCARABELLI: You should check it out. Speaking of advice, I am going to my first Paris Fashion Week and I’m wondering if you have any tips for me?

CUTRONE: Yay. First of all, let’s find somebody who speaks fluent French to write your requests. That would be so chic. Also, do not bring any stiletto shoes because almost all the streets are cobblestone and the fashion parties run late. My signature look of black leggings, oversized clothing and flats is great because you can go anywhere and then you don’t have to worry about your heels getting stuck in those stones. And make sure you have a driver.

SCARABELLI: Definitely.

 CUTRONE: Also, I wouldn’t go to a show if you’re not in the first or second row. People need to understand that you’re coming in from Interview magazine. Unless it’s like Dior. Just take a pass and then don’t write about the client and they’ll learn to put you in a better seat. That’s just how it works. And then you have to go to some good Fashion Week parties. 

SCARABELLI: Yes. 

CUTRONE: You got to go to Rick. Vivienne’s going to be good. I can get you a seat at Vivienne Westwood. I just sadly got an invitation today to her funeral, but that show is probably going to be amazing. You should also meet Diane Pernet from A Shaded View on Fashion. I’m going to introduce you. She’s one of my sisters.

SCARABELLI: Yes please. I’m obsessed with her. Okay so I have to ask, what it would take for me to get axed off your list?

CUTRONE: [Laughs] I’m not out for people. If people are having a run-in with me, it’s usually about something that’s been unjust, like non-payment, or talking shit, or writing something unfactual, or taking advantage of having inner access. I like to say that when I got into the business, I was 5 foot 2 blonde and really, really sweet. [Laughs] There’s a lot of toxic people in this industry and there’s a lot of really amazing, transformationally radiant beings. It’s like a big sorting machine. You’re going to get burned, you’re going to get cut, but there are so many amazing people in this community that help each other beyond what anybody could even imagine.

SCARABELLI: True. Okay, so my last question. Are there any new PR girls that you feel threatened by?

CUTRONE: No, I don’t even know who they are. I’m not really competing against anybody. As a matter of fact, I’m not trying to do anything. I’m doing the clients that I want to work with right now, and I’m developing a couple cannabis brands. That’ll be really good for the Gen Zers. We can all be plant-conscious together. I just want my kids to smoke ganja, have a good time, follow their dreams and make the world a better place.