A YEAR-long dispute between two prominent figures in the worlds of fashion and cinema will reach a New York court today, as the men go to battle in a bid to preserve their reputations.
On the offensive is the prolific director Woody Allen, who will be taking a break from publicising his latest movie Hollywood Ending to pursue a $10 million (€7.4m) lawsuit. In the defendant’s corner is Dov Charney, the charismatic head of the Los Angeles clothing firm American Apparel.
At face value, the two men have more in common than they have in contention. Both are lauded as brilliant, if eccentric and erratic, creative spirits. Both have endured their fair share of controversy, having seen their private lives, and alleged sexual indiscretions, paraded in public.
As day one of the trial opens with jury selection, Allen has shown himself willing to risk further public opprobrium to disassociate himself from the other man.
The dispute began last year when Charney approved a short-lived billboard advertising campaign in New York and Los Angeles. The poster used an image from Allen’s Oscar-winning Annie Hall of him dressed as a Hasidic Jew above the American Apparel logo and alongside Yiddish words that translate as “the holy rebbe” [rabbi].
Allen, who eschews all commercial endorsements, called the poster “sleazy” and “infantile” and sued for $10 million for loss of reputation.
Over the past few months the tone of the dispute has grown ever more rancorous. How much of that bile will be brought into the court today remains unclear.
Charney’s lawyer initially indicated that they were prepared to play hardball. To prove that Allen had no reputation to defend they intended to call his former wife, the actor Mia Farrow, and his wife, Soon-Yi Previn, to the stand.
Allen went through an ugly divorce with Farrow after it was discovered that he was having an affair with Previn, Farrow’s then 22-year-old adopted child and Allen’s stepdaughter. When he heard that both could be called as witnesses, Allen denounced the ploy as a “brutish attempt to smear and intimidate him”.
Now Charney has said he has no intention of making the director’s personal life a focus of the case.
Rather, Charney said, the case American Apparel would present the court would be that the billboards were intended to parody rumours and spurious claims that have in recent months been hurled against him. The clothing magnate has been the subject of several well-publicised sexual harassment suits brought by female members of staff. – (Guardian service)