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Fierce! Fashion Week Slap Turns Into $1 Million Lawsuit
By
Jen Chung
Published Sep 13, 2012
Modified Sep 13, 2012
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By
Jen Chung
Published Sep 13, 2012
Modified Sep 13, 2012
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New York Fashion Week is wrapping up, and it wasn't all fabulously expensive raiments and creative street style—it seems that violence is also "in" this season. First, there was the Fashion Night Out "riot" that left an an Audi damaged, the driver shaken up and . Then, on Sunday, a French magazine editor slapped fashion designer Zac Posen's publicist over seats at his show.
The dustup was first reported by WWD on Monday:
About 30 minutes before Zac Posen’s scheduled start, fire marshals decided to pull 60 seats from the designer’s mostly front-row Avery Fisher Hall venue. It caused quite some confusion and a headache for Posen’s public relations firm, HL Group. That, and the 40-minute delay said to have been caused by Naomi Campbell’s late arrival, must have been too much for at least one French publishing executive and her team, namely Marie-José Susskind-Jalou, president of Jalou publishing house, and her daughters, Jennifer Eymere and Vanessa Bellugeon of Jalouse and L’Officiel magazines, respectively.
Witnesses said Susskind-Jalou didn’t have a seat, and HL Group cofounder Lynn Tesoro was trying to find her one. Impatient with the situation, the quartet left the terrace venue, when, according to reports, the trio started screaming at the p.r. veteran — which somehow ended with Tesoro being slapped in the face. Tesoro confirmed the incident happened, but declined to comment further.
While witnesses say that Susskind-Jalou slapped Tesoro, Eymere claimed she did the slapping and she bragged to WWD, "I said, ‘Don’t speak to my mom like this. You have to stop to speak like that.’ I said, ‘Be careful, I am going to slap you,’ and she kept doing it, and it just happened... I am sorry, I know it’s bad to do that. It was a small slap. It was not strong. I didn’t hurt her, it was just to humiliate her. She humiliated my mom, and I humiliated her in front of her crew. Voilà. I just said at the end, ‘Now you know you don’t f--k with French people.’”
Though Eymere says it was a small slap, a witness told WWD, "It was a ‘Whoa’ kind of moment. On a scale of 1 to 10 with 10 being a knockout punch and one being a pat on the cheek, it was a five. The sound could be heard."
Tesoro has filed a lawsuit against Susskind-Jalou, Eymere and Bellugeon, claiming "assault, battery, emotional distress, slander and/or libel." Vive les Etats-Unis! Now, let's watch some America's Next Top Model catfights:
Tagged
fashion week
lynn tesoro
new york fashion week
slap
violent
Jen Chung
Jen Chung is a former WNYC and Gothamist editor.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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