Did you hear the opening salvos?

Last week a WWD.com story (subscription only, sorry, you’ll only get a peek) with no small amount of slant held forth on the fact that Michelle Obama is championing the cause of little-known American designers and ignoring the big players: Oscar de la Renta, Vera Wang, Carolina Herrera, Donna Karan, Marc Jacobs, Tommy Hilfiger, Ralph Lauren and Calvin Klein, to name a bunch.

With the fashion industry in an economic crisis of its own, it’s not a surprise that the bastions of American style are wondering why the First Lady won’t deign to don some of their beautiful clothes. We can feel — and appreciate — their frustration. Still, most of the designers quoted — Wang, Hilfiger, Karan, Herrera – tempered their comments with support for a fashionable First Lady breaking boundaries.

Another story, in the New York Times, took issue with the fact that Mrs. Obama is relying apparently exclusively on the design choices of retailer Ikram Goldman, the owner of Michelle O’s favorite Chicago boutique for years (a picture from the store below).

Arnold Scassi (hmm, we remember that name from somewhere) chided her, saying that first ladies in the past always called in the big-name designers, and that her Jason Wu inaugural gown was not “flattering in any way. . .  She could have looked much better.”

Hiss.

But leave it to a much bigger name on the world’s fashion stage to take the big shots: Oscar de la Renta.

Among his comments: ” I think I understand what (Obama and her advisors) are doing, but I don’t think that is the right message at this particular point. . . . But there are a lot of great designers out there. I think it’s wrong to go in one direction only.”

Don’t stop there: Ending a comment on what he sees as the need for Mrs. Obama to expand her current range of fashion advisers, he said, “You don’t go to Buckingham Palace in a sweater.”

Oooh, catty.

But wait, he has more. According to both WWD and the fashion blog Fashionologie, at his bridal show yesterday, de la Renta responded to the fact that during her tour of Europe the First Lady chose to wear French designer Azzedine Alaia and Italian design house Moschino items (not American-made choices). At first he sounded reasonable: “Our industry right now is having a very difficult time. I think it would be great if the First Lady dressed in American styles.”

He then testily pointed out that he had made a nice comment about Mrs. Obama that everyone had overlooked: “Look, she has such great looks, if she put on a potato sack it would look great.”

Yes, that was a compliment.

As you can guess, fashion bloggers (many younger, sassier and edge-pushers) are flogging Mr. O for his comments. Even if there’s a very, very large grain of truth in what the American designers say, the man who outfitted all of the recent Republican First Ladies and would have been a big name in Cindy McCain’s closet perhaps should tone it down a bit.

It would be more “appropriate.”