V FOR VENDETTA? NO, WWD!

A silver fox with a scythe for a tongue,John Fairchild perfected the art of twisting a (rhinoplastied) nose out of joint long before TMZ. The Fairchild feuds and barbs that paved the way for our current Age of Vitriol...

FEUDEE:

GEOFFREY BEENE

SCUFFLE BASIS: In 1967 the designer withheld from WWD an early peek at Lynda Bird Johnson's wedding dress. Other sins: Beene gave his country-house exclusive to Architectural Digest, plus Fairchild claimed Beene ["wanted to personally pick" reviewers. FAIRCHILD BLOW DART: Nary a column inch of his paper would reference the label for years, though "it's not a vendetta," Fairchild claimed. RIPOSTE: Aglib 1986 postcard Beene sent home from Europe:

"The only terrorist I have seen wasjohn Fairchild on the Concorde coming over."

FEUDEE:

YVES SAINT LAURENT

SCUFFLE BASIS: Alessthan favorable WWD review of July j 1987's couture collection. FAIRCHILD BLOW DART: While reviews of top designers always appeared on page one, WWD buried the next YSL dispatch on a humiliating page 16.

RIPOSTE: WWD received no invitations to two seasons' worth of YSL shows. DENOUEMENT! In a rare de facto apology, Fairchild gave Saint Laurent a $10,000 leather-bound book

anthologizing WWD's and W's praise

label.

FEUDEE:

KENNETH JAY LANE

SCUFFLE BASIS: Lane declined to have a WWD shutterbug encamped ata private dinner party in 1975. Fairchild responded in ink: the paper called Lane's wife, Nicky, "benefactress of cocaine" and "a fag hag." (Nicky says the article was devastating and "untrue.") •FAIRCHILD BLOW DART: "Kennyjay Lane is a snob—why he got married, I don't know." •RIPOSTE: To Lane, the WWD takedown was "libelous, scandalous"— and, of all things, "was sent to my mother."

FEUDEE:

PAULINE TRIGERE

SCUFFLE BASIS: In 1970, Trigere panned one of Fairchild's failed neologisms on TV. *FAIRCHILD BLOW DART: "I don't want to be part of a publicity stunt.... Every time she sees me in a restaurant, she comes up and gives me a great big kiss, followed by cameramen."

•RIPOSTE: Friends of the designer, who had fled Paris ahead of W.W. II, told Liz Smith, "She escaped Hitler but then encountered the fashion dictator John Fairchild in New York!

FEUDEE:

COCO CHANEL

SCUFFLE BASIS: Boredom?

FAIRCHILD BLOW DART:

Fairchild described her in interviews as a tragic morphine dependent who required nightly straitjacketing into bed.

RIPOSTE:

She scoffed,

"I do not like the cut of your jacket" in the direction of Fairchild's schlubby blazer, before making him take it off so she * could inspect '⅜ the shoddy workmanship.

FEUDEE:

PALM BEACH

SCUFFLE BASIS: He who deemed the West Coast bland extended his geographical "out" list to South Florida. FAIRCHILD BLOW DART: The "town of no great distinction" was also "a cultural desert"—not to mention rife with "rich Republicans."

RIPOSTE: A pan of his 1989 memoirin The Palm Beach Post: "The pot calls the

kettle black."

SARAH BALL