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Television and movies tend to depict the fashion industry as a world full of people with French accents being incredibly rude to each other, generally while wearing impossible heels. That's not usually accurate—fashion people have nerves in their feet just like other humans, for one thing—but every so often, an incident occurs that bears out the whole stereotype so beautifully that it can't be ignored. Such an incident took place at the Zac Posen show on Sunday, when Lynn Tesoro, co-founder of the PR firm HL Group, was slapped across the face by one of a trio of French women.
The show got off to a bumpy start when fire marshals removed 60 seats, and the audience grew even more frustrated when Naomi Campbell failed to arrive on time, causing a 40-minute delay. Tesoro was trying to help find a seat for French publishing executive Marie-José Susskind-Jalou and her daughters, Jennifer Eymere and Vanessa Bellugeon, when they pulled her outside and started screaming at her—and that's when the fateful slap took place.
Women's Wear Daily reports that it's still unclear which woman smacked the PR vet, who confirmed the incident but declined to discuss it further. Witnesses seem to think it was Susskind-Jalou, but her daughter Eymere took full credit. She told WWD:
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."
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