Skin Tight: The Bizarre Story of Guess V. Jordache--Glamour, Greed, and Dirty Tricks in the Fashion Industry

An Old World-style feud betwen two immigrant Sephardic Jewish families, makers of 1980s fashion jeans, is evocatively related by New York magazine columnist Byron ( The Fanciest Dive ). Blow by blow, he recounts the seven-year Jeans War (including accusations of tax and customs fraud) waged by the four Marciano brothers to recover the 50% interest in their Los Angeles-based Guess? company that they had unwisely sold in undervalued stock to the three Nakash brothers, founders of New York's Jordache denims. The convoluted drama, played on four continents by a cast worthy of a suspense novel, involved countless members of the judiciary--federal prosecutor Rudolph Giuliani among them--IRS agents and armies of lawyers and private eyes. In 1990, when asked why he had finally agreed to a settlement, one of the exhausted combatants observed that otherwise ``the fighting would have gone on forever.'' Photos not seen by PW. (Apr.)