PHOTOS: The 9 Most Embarrassing PR Disasters Of 2012

by Jada Wong | 12:52 pm, December 24th, 2012

While the fashion industry certainly had some great moments in 2012 (Bravo, Raf Simons!), it also had its fair-share of low ones.

From all the hullabaloo surrounding the newly minted Saint Laurent Paris to Marc Jacobs‘ flippant excuse for using underage models to everything American Apparel did, we’ve got it all documented for your Christmas Eve schadenfreude pleasure.

Check ‘em out in the gallery below:

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1.Oscar de la Renta and Cathy Horyn's food fight.

In Cathy Horyn's review of Oscar de la Renta's spring 2013 collection, she called the designer a hot dog, slang for "someone showing off his tricks". But de la Renta took it as an insult, and slammed Horyn in an open letter, calling her "a stale 3-day old hamburger". He stuck by his words even after Horyn explained her critique, and for some reason, Lady Gaga decided to give her two cents on the situation, siding with Team Oscar. She then gave a dirty shout out to Horyn and her boyfriend Art Ortenberg in a rap song, and dressed up as a hot dog. The pair eventually made up -- though whether they learned anything from the public spat remains to be seen.

2.Hedi Slimane and Cathy Horyn's 'nonsense'.

Cathy Horyn wasn't blown away by Hedi Slimane's debut collection for ~~Yves Saint Laurent~~ Saint Laurent Paris, nor was she happy about not being invited to the show. So she did her job, and wrote about it. Slimane didn't like that one bit, and responded in an outrageous open letter via Twitter, which Horyn rightly said was "nonsense". Slimane called her out in another series of tweets, and Lady Gaga threw herself into the fray (again). Slimane's tweets were eventually deleted.

3.Marc Jacobs' use of underage models.

Back in January, Marc Jacobs broke the underage models rule as put forth by the CFDA by using 17-year-old Hailey Hasbrook as a fit model and cast her in his fall 2012 show. She was overworked and only paid in trade (industry lingo for clothes and accessories), not money. She said she was totally okay with the situation, but the rest of the industry wasn't, and Jacobs' answer to it all was a simple, "If they don’t want to work with us, they don’t have to."

4.Victoria Secret slams Kate Upton.

Karma is a bitch, and Victoria's Secret is learning it the hard way. Right after Kate Upton landed her Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue cover, a VS casting agent slammed the model and said the company would never use her, calling her a "footballer’s wife”. And where is Upton now? Oh, busy posing for a US Vogue editorial, as well as the British and Italian covers of the industry bible. How's that for a "footballer's wife"?

5.Tone-deaf companies.

Kmart and Celeboutique made self-promotional and tone-deaf tweets shortly after a tragic shooting in Newtown, Connecticut and Aurora, Colorado, respectively. Both companies have apologized, but the bad taste still lingers in everyone's mouths.

6.The slap heard 'round the fashion world.

Things got heated at Zac Posen's spring 2013 runway show over seating arrangements. Fire marshalls had to remove 60 seats just before the show started, and Jalou publishing house president Marie-José Susskind-Jalou was unable to get her front row seat back. Susskind-Jalou was so upset that she slapped HL Group co-founder, Lynn Tesoro (pictured), right in the face, and is now being sued. And that's how the cookie crumbles.

7.Victoria's Secret's offensive costumes.

Victoria's Secret managed to upset more than one ethnic group this year. The lingerie giant pulled a controversial Native American-inspired costume from the annual fashion show after the public voiced their outrage about the misappropriation of the cultural attire. Earlier in the year, a "Sexy Little Geisha" costume was pulled offline after backlash about the Eastern-inspired lingerie perpetuating the sexualization of Asians.

8.Ralph Lauren's Olympics uniforms weren't made in America.

Ralph Lauren was in hot water over the summer after the uniforms he designed for the U.S. Olympic athletes to wear during the Opening Ceremony were discovered to have been made in China, not America. Despite the fact that nearly everything we own is made in places like China, there was major and unnecessary backlash against the designer for doing so, prompting Lauren to promise to manufacture future uniforms domestically.

9.Nearly everything American Apparel did this year.

From self-promotional sales after Hurricane Sandy to multiple banned ads to allegations that Dov Charney choked a former employee, let's just say that American Apparel is, well, doing what American Apparel does best.