That crackling sound you'll hear coming from the front row throughout fashion week? That would be the barely-suppressed, sizzling hostility between Vogue editor in chief Anna Wintour and New York Times fashion critic Cathy Horyn.

In what may be the closest thing to a takedown ever to appear in "Thursday Styles," Horyn delicately bitchslaps the icy empress of American fashion, accusing her of using her outsized influence to strong-arm luxury goods executives into hiring designers she likes, prop up no-talent socialites with the right connections, and otherwise impose a "homogenous, vaguely timid point of view" on the fashion landscape.

Those much-bullied executives don't exactly come rushing to Wintour's defense, voicing their "support" in the form of backhanded compliments. Take Francois-Henri Pinault, chief executive of French conglomerate PPR. Wintour, reports Horyn, attempted to persuade him to hire Phoebe Philo, formerly of Chloe.

"She's not too pushy," says Pinault. "She lets you know it's not a problem if you can't do something she wants. But she makes you understand that if you could, she would be very supportive with her magazine. She really makes you understand that."

Further down, Horyn channels the feelings of "many fashion insiders and critics" who believe that "by promoting labels of dubious design merit but with an obvious social or power connection, like Georgina Chapman of Marchesa, whose companion is the producer Harvey Weinstein, she leaves herself open to the complaint that her magazine promotes a kind of a pedantry."

By stocking fashion houses with pre-approved designers, and by farming out her editors to dress socialites and celebrities for events that Vogue plans to cover, Wintour, charges Horyn, is creating a vast monoculture—a "glamourous, if predictable, formula" that "resembles the Hollywood blockbuster."

Horyn even manages to suggest that Wintour's power-hoarding could bring about a 1984-like scenario in which free will has been extinguished, fashion-wise. She writes:

"[Y]ou don't have to doubt Ms. Wintour's integrity to see the danger of too much influence. You just have to look at the magazine and its three spinoffs (Teen Vogue, Men's Vogue, Vogue Living), at the tendency to feature the same socialites and pretty dresses, in the same perfect settings, and then imagine what the implications would be if she could also determine where designers worked."

Say no more, Cathy. The tyrant must be stopped!