The designer says it was a conversation about a street casting taken out of context
Over the weekend, screenshots were posted to social media which claimed to show designer Gosha Rubchinskiy asking a 16-year-old boy to send him photos in private. The teenager, who shared the exchange because he wanted “to show how Gosha can’t really be trusted as a designer”, uploaded the images to Facebook groups including High Fashion Talk and The Basement, and the news was soon picked up by Diet Prada.
The designer’s team was quick to respond to the allegations and deny that anything was amiss. In a statement published yesterday on Hypebeast, they said the conversation was about a street casting, and that the exchange “has been altered and taken out of context”. Dazed has since received a further statement, which we have published in full below.
Gosha Rubchinskiy’s brand – which was known for its ‘post-Soviet’ skatewear, ceased production of seasonal collections earlier this year. The Gosha Rubchinskiy trademark is owned by Comme des Garçons Paris International, which produced the brand’s collections.
In a statement provided to WWD yesterday and republished here with his permission, Comme des Garçons’ president, Adrian Joffe, said: “I am deeply concerned about the events of today, allegations which Gosha has emphatically denied. I abhor the mob mentality of social media and the guilty until proved innocent syndrome which seems to be the order of the day. While I deeply deplore the abuse of power in any industry, I am waiting for the whole truth to come out.”
Read the full statement from Rubchinskiy’s team below:
"If you want to be heard by the teenagers, then more time with them you should spend. To listen and to understand them.
"Gosha’s brand is successful among youth because he always works with common teens from the street, spends time with them in order to understand and to hear them. In what they are interested and about what they care about at present time.
"Gosha has been doing casting by Instagram for many years now. It is a normal practice nowadays. We always ask to face photos, in full length and topless. Sometimes photos in underwear are required in order to understand the volume of hips. After the person confirmed by us, we contact him officially by email, if it is teenager, then we begin to communicate with his parents. Sometimes in Instagram we receive strange messages in direct message, sometimes they send inappropriate photos, especially when we reject them for casting. We immediately block these people and delete all inappropriate photos. Sometimes, if the person begins to behave strangely we block him too.
"There recently were a few similar strange messages, or messages about hacking but we did not attached any value to it. All of this looks like a planned provocation. The boy himself asks to contact him in FaceTime and asks to make persistently video talk, in the consequence begins to record the discussion. Gosha has nothing to hide, there is no bad thing and he communicated openly with guy on communication video. Gosha asks to send photos necessary for casting. During dialogue and on the next day the boy begins to behave strangely, erases his messages and begins to call up Gosha again persistently. As a response, Gosha blocks this guy. In the consequence on screen shots and video we see discussion pulled out of context with many erased parts, so, that dialogue loses any sense.
"You can see for yourself by looking up the video laid out by the guy. There is nothing bad from Gosha’s side. All of this appears as planned provocation forged beforehand. With no information about future of Gosha brand since this spring, people start fabrication of fakes and many rumors. This is one more example of it.
"We also want to add that there have been incredible messages and posts of support from many models who have worked with us in the past who can't believe this guy and who say how obviously fake everything he does is."
