‘Fake it until you make it’: Anna Sorokin, the New York socialite scammer who almost got away with it
- Sorokin’s wardrobe is providing light entertainment between the El Chapo case and the start of the Harvey Weinstein sexual assault trial
Judge Diane Kiesel could barely conceal her irritation. Anna Sorokin, the defendant at the centre of a highly publicised art world extortion trial, was refusing to attend proceedings on account of dissatisfaction with her courtroom outfit.
“This is a trial,” Kiesel told Sorkin’s lawyer, Todd Spodek. “She’s a defendant. I’m sorry, her clothing is not up to her standards. Are you asking me to stop this trial because of her wardrobe?”
Not exactly, said Spodek. It was true, he said, that the 28-year-old dubbed the “socialite scammer” by the New York tabloids “didn’t want to appear in Rikers clothes and her clothes were dirty and not pressed”.
But, he said, it was “an aggregate of things, not just her clothes. She’s feeling nauseous. She’s been up since 4am. She’s not being treated well by other inmates and some officers.”
Kiesel directed court officers to give Sorokin coffee or water and ordered a break. An hour later, the defendant was brought in. She was wearing a white shirt and black trousers.
It wasn’t the Miu Miu she wore on Tuesday, or Thursday’s Saint Laurent. (GQ reported she had hired a stylist.) For much of the last week, Sorokin’s wardrobe has been informing hearings that have given New York light entertainment between the El Chapo case and the start in May of the Harvey Weinstein sexual assault trial.
The obsession with presentation is oddly appropriate, since the story of Anna Sorokin, or Anna Delvey as she presented herself to the highest echelons of the art world, is about a young woman accused of using a sheen of sophistication to perpetrate a two-year, US$275,000 scam of friends, banks, private jet companies, designers and upscale hotels.