Adidas Is Looking Into Sexual Misconduct Claims Against Gosha Rubchinskiy

Over the weekend, news broke about Gosha Rubchinskiy behaving inappropriately with a minor, when screenshots of a sexually explicit conversation between the designer and a 16-year-old fan appeared all over the internet. Since then, Gosha has made his own official statement, denying the allegations, saying the images had been doctored and taken out of context, as the designer was just looking for models on social media, like he does “all the time.”

“Gosha did a face time with him and then he asked for a photo to have on file with all the others,” the statement read. “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.”

That explanation was apparently not good enough for Gosha’s frequent collaborator, adidas, who said they are now looking into the claim seriously. According to a statement the brand gave Sole Collector, adidas will be taking “any allegation of this nature extremely seriously” and is “currently looking into the claim that has been made.”

Adidas has been a longtime supporter of the Russian designer, most recently teaming up with him on his Fall 18 collection. The brand didn’t explicitly say what they would do if their “investigation” turned up information that the claims were in fact true, so we’ll just have to wait and see.