Written by Elizabeth Paton
This week, male model and graphic designer Owen Mooney said he was caught by Alexander Wang, an influential fashion designer, at a nightclub in New York City in 2017.
Mooney made the allegations in a pair of videos he posted on social media. Shortly afterwards, further allegations of sexual assault and unintentional encounter were made against the 37-year-old designer, posted by Instagram accounts that did not identify the prosecutors.
On Thursday, after days of silence, Wang responded to the pleas – and the criticism he made online.
“Over the past few days, I have been receiving baseless and misleading allegations,” the designer wrote in a statement sent to the New York Times. “These claims were falsely augmented by infamous social media accounts for posting defamatory material from unpublished and / or anonymous sources with zero or no factual evidence. ”
The allegations were compounded and retweeted on Instagram by two hugely acclaimed followers who have established themselves as fashion industry watchers: Diet Prada, run by Tony Liu and Lindsey Schuyler, and another account that is dedicated to describing the inner workings of the model industry. The New York Times has not independently substantiated the allegations. Mooney did not respond to requests via email and direct message for comments.
In 2019, Azealia Banks – a rapper and songwriter who was a user and collaborator of Wang – shared a series of anonymous accounts on her Instagram stories about allegations of groping with the designer. In 2017, a man named Nick Ward sent out a Twitter thread that said Wang grabbed his limbs at a Brooklyn concert.
In his statement, Wang said that “seeing these lies about me being realized as truths is about to be suppressed.”
“I have never been involved in the misbehavior described and would never behave as instructed,” he continued. “I intend to get to this point and take responsibility for whoever is responsible for initiating these claims and spreading them wildly online.”
On Monday, Wang’s Instagram account turned off the ability to comment on his latest post. The official Instagram account for his brand did the same on every post this week.
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