(Photo: John Barrett/Globe Photos)

Last week, Condé Nast settled (for $2.21 million) with Anna Wintour’s former nanny Lori Feldt, who’d sued the company, arguing that fumes from the paint thinner its contractors used to remove the words FUR HAG from the front of Wintour’s Sullivan Street house in 1997 had caused her brain damage. So who defaced the place? People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals—which once sent the Vogue editor a perfume labeled “Anna Wintour’s Viscera,” with a scent of rotting animals—would seem a prime suspect. But PETA president Ingrid Newkirk blames rogue activists the Paint Panthers. Still, she says, Wintour’s “a fur pimp. I can’t imagine she would lose a wink of sleep over her maid. She doesn’t lose a wink of sleep over this bloody industry.” Doesn’t Newkirk feel for the ex-nanny? “Of course! If I feel bad about the suffering of a mouse, I’m going to feel sad about the suffering of a maid.” Wintour declined to comment.

Related:

• Archive: “Intelligencer Features”
• Articles by Jada Yuan
• Table of Contents: November 1, 2004 issue of New York | Subscribe!