The following correction was printed in the Guardian's Corrections and clarifications column, Tuesday 19 May 2009

The article below about an impending lawsuit should have given Woody Allen's latest film as Whatever Works. The piece was also wrong in referring to the director's divorce from Mia Farrow. It was a drawn-out contest over child custody; the two were not married.

A year-long dispute between two prominent figures in the worlds of fashion and cinema will reach a New York court tomorrow, as the men go to battle in a bid to preserve their reputations.

On the offensive is the prolific director Woody Allen, who will be taking a break from publicising his latest movie Hollywood Ending to pursue a $10m (£6.6m) lawsuit. In the defendant's corner is Dov Charney, the charismatic head of the Los Angeles clothing firm American Apparel.

At face value, the two men have more in common than they have in contention. Both are lauded as brilliant, if eccentric and erratic, creative spirits. Both have endured their fair share of controversy, having seen their private lives, and alleged sexual indiscretions, paraded in public.

But as day one of the trial kicks into gear, Allen has shown himself willing to risk further public opprobrium in order to disassociate himself from the other man.

The dispute began last year when Charney approved a short-lived billboard advertising campaign in New York and Los Angeles. The poster used an image from Allen's Oscar-winning Annie Hall of him dressed as a Hasidic Jew above the American Apparel logo and alongside Yiddish words that translate as "the holy rebbe".

The poster was designed as one in a series of controversial ads. Charney prides himself on his ability to provoke: he takes many of the advertising photographs himself, and they often feature semi-clad young women.

Allen, who eschews all commercial endorsements, was mightily unimpressed. He called the poster "sleazy" and "infantile" and promptly sued American Apparel for $10m for loss of reputation.

Over the past few months the tone of the dispute has grown ever more rancourous. How much of that bile will be brought into the Manhattan federal court from tomorrow remains unclear.

Charney's lawyer initially indicated that the defendants were prepared to play hardball. In order to prove that Allen had no reputation to damage they intended to call his former wife, the actor Mia Farrow, and his wife, Soon-Yi Previn, to the stand.

Allen famously went through an ugly divorce with Farrow after it was discovered that he was having an affair with Previn, Farrow's then 22-year-old adopted child and Allen's stepdaughter. When he heard that Farrow and Previn could be called as witnesses, Allen denounced the idea as a "brutish attempt to smear and intimidate him".

But since then the defence has made assuaging noises. Charney has said he has no intention of making the director's personal life a central focus of the case and that he has "deep respect for Mr Allen who is a source of inspiration to me".

Rather, Charney said, the case American Apparel would present the court would be that the billboards were intended to be a social parody of the rumours and spurious claims that have in recent months been hurled against him. The clothing magnate has been the subject of several sexual harassment suits brought by female members of his staff which have been widely publicised, even on the satirical TV show Saturday Night Live.