This had the makings of fashion’s most notorious current feud. In one corner:
International Herald Tribune legend
Suzy Menkes, in another,
Marc Jacobs. Following a painful two-hour delay for Marc’s signature collection show in N.Y., not to mention a dizzying runway order, Menkes wrote a less than complimentary reaction in her review of the show. “I would like to murder him with my bare hands and never see another Marc Jacobs show in my entire life,” she uttered in print, before coldly dismissing his clothes as “a freak’s costume party.” She later attempted to retract her statements by explaining that “my British sense of humor fell flat.” However, the damage was done and the whole world was waiting for a fierce showdown at Jacobs’s Louis Vuitton show last night.
The duel turned into a love fest. Marc, with a smile on his face, devised a plan to surprise the legendary writer. He left Menkes a Marc Jacobs T-shirt on her seat, tied up with an elegant bow. The IHT fashion scribe looked puzzled at first, but then immediately scooped it up, along with her show program, to peruse the front row (she put the shirt in her small Christian Lacroix handbag). “I haven’t opened it yet,” was all Menkes would say when asked what words the shirt bore. Jacobs, however was less enigmatic. He winked to
Chic Report and divulged that it was a gentle “love letter.”