The London Times quoted Daphne Guinness in yesterday's paper calling Victoria Beckham "an ugly pig ... downbeat miserable and awful."

The London Times quoted Daphne Guinness in yesterday's paper calling Victoria Beckham "an ugly pig ... downbeat miserable and awful." Guinness continued (allegedly), "Of course she's going to make money — she's backed by Simon Fuller. I don't have anyone! She annoys the shit out of me." She later took to Twitter to vehemently deny she said these things, accusing the paper of not fact-checking the story, and writer Camilla Long (who she met through the late Isabella Blow) of betraying her trust. "And for the record I not only admire Victoria Beckham but know her and like her. My point was that I do most things alone without a backer," she adds.

It would seem strange for Guinness — heiress to the Guinness fortune and owner of a $15 million pad in New York — to so publicly slam someone for having financial support. But is that stranger than the possibility of the Times fabricating the quotes, as Guinness claims? During New York Fashion Week, the Daily Beast's fashion critic Robin Givhan wondered why the top editors sitting front row at Beckham's show, which she thought was quite lovely, were snickering at her. "There were muffled giggles, knowing glances, and plenty of eye-rolling over the non-stop narration," she wrote, arguing that it seems hard for women designers to win the approval of the industry's top tastemakers. So is Victoria Beckham just a favorite target — the woman that other women love to hate? Whether or not Long or Guinness personally feel that way, could that have informed the Times article in some way? Few things make a fashion story more clickable than that rawr-hiss factor. Not even nudity.

Daphne Guinness defends herself on Twitter and denies she was rude about Victoria Beckham! [Grazia]