Fashion Designer Elie Tahari Got Into a Physical Fight With a Boutique Security Guard

“Be kind to everyone you meet,” someone once said. “For everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.” None more so than fashion designer Elie Tahari, who was physically removed from an Intermix boutique Saturday after a tussle with a security guard.

According to Page Six, which got the story on good authority from the new girlfriend of an ex-husband of a truly insane Real Housewife cast member, Tahari was taking pictures inside the store with his ex-wife Rory when the security guard asked him to leave.

Tahari refused, and he and the guard began tussling. Reporteth Page Six, the pair slammed into a mirror, five cops showed up to break them up, and, “Little girls and their mothers were hiding in the dressing room crying.”

And then—just because the gossip gods are good and underpaid employees are deliciously bitter—this detail emerges:

Tahari might have been photographing Intermix clothes so he could copy them. The ex-staffer told me: “He’d always say, ‘If you can’t make it, steal it.’”

It’s a great day for his former employees, who generally seem not to like him, and apparently with good reason—Tahari (who was sued for $12 million by a former staffer last year) reportedly hired an ex-Israeli army officer to fire most of his executives and paranoidly searched through employees’ emails.

“Be kind to everyone you meet,” the quote continues. “For one day you might really embarrass yourself and that’s when they’re going to give Richard Johnson some really rude quotes.”