Judge Diane Kiesel could barely conceal her irritation. Anna Sorokin, the defendant at the centre of a highly publicized art world extortion trial, was refusing to attend proceedings on account of dissatisfaction with her courtroom outfit.

“This is a trial,” Kiesel told Sorokin’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 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 June of the Harvey Weinstein sexual assault trial.

Anna Sorokin in New York state supreme court on 27 March. Photograph: Richard Drew/AP

The obsession with presentation is oddly appropriate. 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, $275,000 scam of friends, banks, private jet companies, designers and upscale hotels.

The name Anna Delvey first became public a year ago, in a New York magazine story titled How Anna Delvey Tricked New York’s Party People. Vanity Fair followed up with an account of how the woman invited a friend on a lavish Marrakech holiday, then left her to foot the bill.

She walked into my life in Gucci sandals and Céline glasses Rachel DeLoache

“She walked into my life in Gucci sandals and Céline glasses,” wrote Rachel DeLoache Williams, “and showed me a glamorous, frictionless world of hotel living and Le Coucou dinners and infra-red saunas and Moroccan vacations. And then she made my $62,000 disappear.”

‘Giants of the modern contemporary scene’

Sorokin is accused of racking up $160,000 in fees at a financial advisory firm in connection with an attempt to rent a Park Avenue property in which she planned to open an arts club. Presenting herself as a wealthy art collector from Cologne, she offered agents a suspicious-looking screenshot showing a $20m bank balance.

At the centre of the alleged scam was a glossy 80-page prospectus aimed at potential investors in the “Anna Delvey Foundation”, which came with names that would make art world insiders, some of whom allegedly became her targets, feel at home.

“Her interests and collecting has [sic] spanned giants of the modern and contemporary scene,” the brochure read, listing: “Urs Fischer, Cindy Sherman, Agnes Martin, Ed Ruscha, Anish Kapour [sic], and Helmut Newton, to name a few.”

Anna Sorokin celebrates New York fashion week in 2013. Photograph: Matteo Prandoni/BFA/REX/Shutterstock

It also included names from commercial side of the art world, including designer Daniel Arsham, former Warhol Museum director Eric Shiner, and Sotheby’s vice-president of global digital and marketing strategy Noah Wunsch, who recently sold a collection of Supreme skateboards designed by well-known artists for $1.2m.

According to the New York Post, “Anna Delvey” also tried to scam “the ultimate conman” Billy McFarland, who is now jailed in connection with the notorious Fyre festival.

Not surprisingly, her story has gained the attention of film-makers. Shonda Rhimes, the force behind Grey’s Anatomy and Scandal, has announced she is creating a TV series about Sorokin. Jennifer Lawrence and Margot Robbie have reportedly expressed interest in the lead in a film based on the Vanity Fair story. Sorokin, who has pleaded not guilty, is reportedly interested in seeing her life on the screen.

But who is she? On the surface, that’s easy to answer. According to prosecutors, she is from Russia. Her father, it has been reported, is a truck driver. More difficult to answer is how her alleged fraud got as far as it did.

For the past decade or more, the art world has been awash in foreign money, much of it from former Soviet states. In such light, the fewer questions galleries and auction houses ask about the origins of such new money or its bearers, the better.

But some New York women who met “Anna Delvey” found themselves asking one key question. She may have been able to carry off the fashion, but her hair was not coiffed to their high standards. Why not?

‘There’s a little bit of Anna in everyone’

In opening remarks last week, Spodek attempted to present his client as anyone else who comes to New York to make it. He cited a Sinatra anthem, New York, New York, saying the idea of “making a brand new start of it” here “resonates with people all over the world”.

“There’s a little bit of Anna in everyone,” he said. “Everyone lies a little.”

He framed her crimes as “chutzpah” and “moxie”, arguing that the accepted rule of New York’s elite social scene was “fake it until you make it”. He also blamed the influence of social media-obsessed culture.

Any millennial will tell you, it is not uncommon to have delusions of grandeur Todd Spodek

“Any millennial will tell you,” he said, “it is not uncommon to have delusions of grandeur.”

Asked to explain his client’s preoccupation with presentation, he told the Guardian: “It’s particular to highbrow society, whether that’s art or fashion or film or music. The barriers for entry are high or you have to have connections.”

The brochure Sorokin presented, he said, “was an accomplished, vetted business plan”.

It was enough to get Sorokin in the door. One well-known hotelier contacted by the Guardian said they had taken a meeting with her as a favour to a friend, Aby Rosen, an art collector and developer from whom Sorokin attempted to rent space for her club and who is scheduled to take the stand.

“I listened to 35 minutes of it and left the meeting,” the hotelier said. “It sounded like complete gibberish.”

The Sorokin case comes at the end of an art world boom. In its aftermath there have been a procession of forgery trials, tax fraud cases and accusations of double-dealing between wealthy collectors and dealers. Most disputes in this luxury market where wealth meets – or collides with – art salesmen offering conferred social sophistication are settled before they ever reach court. Sorokin, however, turned down a plea deal last year.

On Friday, after the prosecution suggested the defendant might be “malingering”, Kiesel warned Sorokin it was in her interests to attend.

“I’ve gotten mixed signals here,” Kiesel said, after being told Sorokin was feeling unwell and of unspecified “logistical” issues with her attire. “And when other defendants gave me mixed signals, I’ve called them out and asked them about the nature of the sickness. I don’t think Ms Sorokin should get special treatment.

“If she refuses to show up for reasons I think are not legitimate, this case is going to go on with an empty chair.”

• This article was amended on 1 April 2019 to correct an instance of a misspelling of Sorokin’s family name as Sorkin.