Catfight! Marc Jacobs vs. Suzy Menkes

IT'S ON! Jacobs, Menkes (inset)(Photos: PatrickMcMullan.com/Getty Images)

Drama! Today's WWD cover story details the best Fashion Week spat in the history of histrionic fashion spats and makes us love prolific fashion pixie Marc Jacobs more than ever.

After Jacobs's show this week began a staggering two hours late, critic Suzy Menkes fumed: "I would like to murder him with my bare hands and never see another Marc Jacobs show in my entire life" before savaging his clothes as "a freak's costume party" in her review for the International Herald Tribune.

In response, Jacobs, incensed by Menkes's review and frustrated that the trade pub had printed rumors that his show was tardy because he was hanging in the Mercer Hotel bar, unleashed a blistering defense sure to silence—or at least stun—his detractors.

Claiming he was at the office for three days straight before returning to his apartment at the Mercer to shower, Jacobs insisted: "I took 20 minutes to shower and shave—I stank like a raccoon! I could not go to the show like that." And to the editors in the front row griping that the late start was keeping them from their families, Jacobs shot back: "I work my ass off. I don't take vacations. I don't have homes all over the world. I don't ride horses: I fucking work for a living. Again, like this idea, you have a family? OK, well that's nice, I don't, and I work. So leave me alone and don't come to the show next time.