This weekend an Instagram account called High Fashion Talk posted screenshots purporting to be between Gosha Rubchinskiy and a 16-year-old fan of the Russian designer. The 16-year-old, Jan Silfverling, had shared the Instagram DMs and WhatsApp conversations, which began with him discussing the possibility of modelling for Gosha’s lookbook and interviewing him for a school project. Some of the messages in the conversation had been deleted, and Jan alleges that the deleted messages were of an explicit nature. The story was picked up and further publicised by Diet Prada.
Gosha has responded by denying the allegations, alleging it was a routine casting that has been taken out of context, describing it as a “planned provocation” on the part of 16-year-old. Adrian Joffe, President of Comme des Garcons and Dover Street Market, who produce and distribute the label, issued a further denial to WWD. Saying Gosha was being treated as “guilty until proven innocent” and speaking out against the “mob mentality of social media”.
We reached out to Gosha’s team for further comment, and have provided his response below and unedited in full:
“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 rumours. 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 cant believe this guy and who say how obviously fake everything he does is.”
Members of Gosha’s crew of Muscovite skaters and creatives also defended the designer. Tolia Titaev of the Gosha aligned PACCBET label and Valentin Fufaev of DoublecheeseburgerVF both posted in support of Gosha, with Valentin urging those models who Gosha has worked with in the past to come out in support of the designer.
We have also reached out to Jan Silfverling for further comment and will update this story accordingly.