Gosha Rubchinskiy accused of ‘inappropriate behaviour’ by underage fan

Russian fashion designer Gosha Rubchinskiy has been accused of inappropriate behaviour by an underage model during an online casting.

Screenshots of Rubchinskiy’s conversation with 16-year-old Jan Silfverling were shared online via the High Fashion Talk Instagram account and Facebook page.

Silfverling alleged that the designer wanted him to send images “from the bathroom” away from his parents. He also told High Fashion Talk that Rubchinskiy had sent him more explicit messages via WhatsApp, but that the 34-year-old had later deleted these from the online conversation. “I would like to show how Gosha can’t be trusted as a designer”, Silfverling wrote online.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by High Fashion Talk Group (@hftgroup) on Dec 9, 2018 at 11:55am PST

Rubchinskiy is well-known for his “street-castings”, which include approaching would-be models online or in real life to take part in shoots or catwalk shows. In a statement, Rubchinskiy’s team denied the allegations, claiming that Silfverling wanted to smear the designer after his application to appear in Rubchinskiy’s latest look book was rejected.

“We have been doing street casting for shows and look books for many years now. Gosha did a face time with [and then he asked for a photo to have on file with all the others. The person said he wasn’t alone and couldn’t take photo so Gosha suggested he just quickly goes to the bathroom and take a quick photo on the mirror, so he could show the rest of the team and have it on file,” Rubchinskiy’s team said in a statement to news site Hypebeast. “It is clear there has been modifications and deletions to make [the messages] look bad. We have been doing such direct street casting for ten years and we have never had such a problem, therefore this is invalid.”