The Rise and Fall of Gosha Rubchinskiy

Gosha rinsky was the upand cominging brand Once Upon a Time predating demna he bought Eastern European Aesthetics to the Forefront at a pivotal time in menswar becoming one of the buzziest names in the industry however following some very serious accusations surrounding teen boys seemingly all of that was ripped away as he became one of the very few designers ever to truly be Iced Out of the industry but firstly that synopsis may not be the truth and secondly it looks like thanks to Kanye West Gosha may be making a return really quickly before we start I just wanted to let you guys know that I've started posting on threads so if you're on threads follow me over there thank you gosh's business began with spring summer 09 named in English evil empire The Collection showcased Russian Street Wear and included simple elements that he would become known for like socks over tracksuit bottoms tracksuit jackets studs and shaved heads however this collection wasn't the start of his career as he'd been building a name for himself in the art scene in Moscow where he was a street photographer known for emulating now disgraced photographer Terry Richardson and you can see this influence in his work the photographs were harsh the lighting was Stark and the work was aesthetically Unapologetic gosh's photography was highly praised often featured young boys or teens as well as drunken sters and purposefully flammatory imagery one of which a boy in a swash the shirt that I obviously couldn't include there were other kinds of photos but his main area of photographical Interest were these boys and their surroundings and because we're talking about this in a fashion context I am purposely only including the images with people made previous to his fashion debut that got him to consider fashion as a viable path but I will link the flicker account below if you'd like to see the pictures without people so it was this photography work that came to inform his debut collection specifically The Collection much like his photography was inspired by post Soviet youth who had their childhood affected by the political economic and cultural changes seen after the dissolution of the USSR in 1991 this is exactly why he reasoned the use of these young boys because he related to them being that he was only seven when the USSR dissolved and 24 when he put on his first show referencing this the show seemingly went down fairly well that we don't have any reviews of the show currently online we do know that about 700 people came to it and that he had gained a stockist in Twin shop just from this one show alone so naturally things had started rather explosively for the designer and it wouldn't take long for him to make his fashionable return his second show Growing and expanding aut9 continued these themes of post Soviet youth but combined this with how that tied to the the developing online world or specifically its lack of Regulation allowing the corruption of Youth during a period where they were at their most hopeful about the world having just come out of Soviet Russia it was this contradiction of ideas that fed a very interesting aesthetic language coming from the youth and then documented by gsha something that his feature in Vice later that year detailing a look book shot by gsha likely discussed going off of this blog post that references it and something that Dema himself would later comment on in a much more blatant way that exposes what kinds of material were available to children at this time potentially what Gosha was referencing and specifically what Gosha was commenting on in terms of how that all transferred to retailing Gosha may not have been aware of what he was doing but he was commercializing an untapped aesthetic in fashion and doing it in an incredibly graphic manner that was easy to understand solely from the visual language meanwhile the clothes themselves were very easily commodified as they consisted of already existing and popular garments like t-shirts and sweats that were just reframed in this new and desirable manner in short much like the street we brands of America and Japan he took this already established aesthetic from Russia and built a world around it that made it desirable fashionably it's really no wonder that he saw a quick success growing his stockish lists by just the second season including an invitation to create an installation for a then new store named ketki Mo 20 store or km20 that went on to be quite a big deal in fashion in Moscow and even abroad the brand was beginning to make waves with increasing features in magazines like 032c that printed his photographical brochure aglets that was prepared as supplementary material for his second collection all of this promotion simply could not have come at a better time his collections had been working actually to become a Trilogy and the finale the sunrise is not far behind the mountains was just around the corner offering a blatant opportunity to Fashion editors and professionals to Champion his climax making them seem more in the know and making gsha seem more important the sunrises not far behind the mountains was visualized in three parts a video filmed in cusk and hosted at the cycles and Seasons event in Moscow which many influencers including Brian boy attended a series of photographs bound together in a book and the collection itself which was presented in an exhibition of guys working out in the clothes in a disused gym in moscow's suburbs it was incredibly hard to find even images of this but video footage did once exist on dazed though it has since been removed also much like his first two collections there are no online reviews that I could find regardless of if I searched in English or in Russian so unfortunately it's hard to know much about the work directly but we can assume that it was well received due to his next show named slave being included in London's Fashion East Men's Wear installation this work slave was not about fashion but it was a recreation of his childhood bedroom during the disillusion of the USSR in 1991 which well displayed the World building of his brand while legitimizing his stance not only as a fashion Creator but an artist bridging this gap between photography art and fashion in a totally new aesthetic bearing in mind this was 4 years before dem's veton debut this idea of commodifying Eastern European Aesthetics just hadn't come to the Forefront of fashion yet it was fresh and new and he was quickly praised by the fashion industry for it even scoring a solo exhibition in Berlin with 032c that also both had a catalog and showed his documentary sister leus which unfortunately are both lost to time so Gosha was a real rising star in 2010 but you'll notice that his last two pieces of work had little to do with fashion and frankly that's because of cost fashion is famously very hard to profit from for small businesses and considering that he was in Russia it was particularly hard to get the Logistics to buy print and sell profitably despite if this unboxing video of a t-shirt from his second collection is to be believed him buying cheap mass-produced T-shirts from China to print his early collection graphics on frankly regardless of the strides that he took both to cut costs and to meet demand it was no longer financially viable for him to move forward with fashion and he was forced to wait he was out of the industry for about a year in fact according to this interview that he conducted at the a but that's not to say that he stopped working he continued his work in photography as well as the two exhibitions that I just mentioned he also released a very small collection with an American company named alamont for spring summer 12 but really that was under the name aglet which was a theme from the third collection so it's more like an extension of the sunrises not far behind the mountains than its own Standalone season in fact it was only after he was contacted by com de garon who he had been stoed by before in London stov Street Market that he was given enough of a reason to return that he just couldn't turn down for an undisclosed amount of money karon purchased all the Brand's intellectual property and took over their production sales marketing and distribution I don't believe they purchased the entire brand because everywhere this deal is described as a partnership but it's certainly very close to an acquisition that saw the baited return of Gosha rinsky for Autumn winter 2012 this collection was a huge turning point for the brand The Collection was far more commercial than before in the sense that it's expanded as product based now include nits and they've also pulled from previous collections to make running themes such as the rasat print which was first seen in his second collection Autumn win9 it was a really strong commercial return in terms of product offering but from the promotional side at least in my opinion looking at this in retrospect the video in combination with the music used which I'll play a small portion of [Music] now gave a scarier vibe to the brand that I don't personally read from his previous work which to me was more angsty than it was scary it seems that they understood this too because from here as sales grew steadily from Autumn winter 12 through Autumn winter 14 they developed back to the more angsty Vision that was initial to the brand meanwhile they continued to develop signifiers such as this shape of vest stripes and the rubber tag in spring summer 13 these flat studs and in general this kind of plain collar in Autumn winter 13 this symbol that would go on to be a huge signifier along with the rasat text or Russian text in general and bucket hats for spring summer 14 and for Autumn winter 14 their first proper collab with these hamper shoes Patchwork and this kind of a duffel coat the brand had been ironed out it was running smoothly with Comas on Logistics and collection planning and though it still wasn't truly making a profit there was potential there potential enough for Adrien Joff president of K dearon and husband of Ray kuo to agree to gosha's First catwalk presentation in Spring 2015 it was certainly a risk to put on the show but it far surpassed expectations in terms of pushing the gsha brand out there into the Zeitgeist show Studio did a panel I remember several outlets at the time like 032c covering the show and even I personally was influenced to go to DOA Street Market specifically to try on the clothes it was a huge success and pieces like the gosh rinsky logo print t-shirt the two-piece tracksuit and the alien knit were just everywhere in London and if I remember correctly in Tokyo as well they were also very popular truly exploding the brand in terms of popularity by Autumn winter 15 they made 25,000 units by spring summer 16 sales were up 350% and sold out in 2 days and by Autumn winter 16 they were up to 50,000 units produced it was a real phenomenon in street wear to which Adrien D was quoted saying it couldn't be kept on the shelves with graphic t-shirts and accessories selling the best just from personal recollection of talking to the staff members in DOA Street I remember it was specifically this jumper this t-shirt and this scarf as well as the socks that sold extremely fast from autum 15 then this set and the 1984 t-shirt from spring summer 16 and these nets and belts from Autumn winter 16 Gosha was a real money maker for DOA Street and so in 2016 Comm and gsha came back together to release rasit which is spelled in English as p a c CB t as a diffusion line obviously to bring in more revenue from the ever increasing profile of the designer the label was a collaboration with toia Tif and honestly was quite similar to the Gosha namesake label but was even more explicitly for skaters even producing a line of skateboards in his ongoing desire for Great World building this really was the huge growth period for gsha he was the buzziest designer on the scene even to the point that he was turning down stockist to control The Narrative of his brand according to the show Studio panel on his spring summer 17 show but this was certainly continued from spring summer 17 to Autumn winter 17 spring summer 18 and Autumn winter 18 in which he was also seeing a lot of brand collaborations like feler in spring summer 17 Adidas in Autumn winter 17 Burberry in spring summer 18 and Levis and Dr Martins in autum Winter 18 that actually also saw a continuation of his Adidas and bbery collabs all of which added to his previous collaborations with Brands like Reebok and camper that evidenced his commercial prowess at that time and ability for providing that link between all of these quite different brands and the street wear Market they provided him a quick injection of cash and he provided them an element of cool even to the effect that he was chosen to design the Adidas set for the 2012 World [Music] Cup gsha was one of the biggest stars in underground street wear the top of his game he had so much influence in fact that on April 4th 2018 he announced that he wanted to swap things up and start producing oneof projects instead of formalized cwalk presentations something that's incredibly hard to do for any brand big or small because it removes you from the pr machine that is Fashion Week and significantly reduces your exposure to the Press but saying that he had already started to test the waters with this after his aut winter 17 show was held in Russia forcing many to fly to kagad for the presentation and had planned for the following two collections also to be held in Russia in accordance with his World Cup Adidas contract which allowed him to show in two cities that were going on to host World Cup games but this Autumn winter 18 catwalk the the one that was in partnership with Adidas would actually be his last formal catwalk entirely however because of this announcement that he made we don't know truly if this was intended as the end of the brand there is potential that it was meant to totally close and forgot it to move on to new projects like acur which was a skate shop he opened in July 2018 or of course it could have continued on a seasonless basis it's just that before we got to see what his plans would have been everything came crashing down prematurely when on December 8th 2018 Gosha would be accused of soliciting lwd photos from miners from two different accounts now fashion ran and fhtv both have really informative and entertaining videos on this topic Roan from the time and fh's as a retrospective however both of them look upon on this situation more sympathetically than how I remember the situation going down so I plan this next section attempting to represent the many sides to the controversy so as to reflect the reasons for this discrepancy between our experiences and thus why it's still a contentious controversy today on December 8th 2018 High fashion talk posted several screenshots onto Instagram and Facebook of gsha talking to a then 16-year-old boy named j silverling over Instagram DMS and WhatsApp chats where he asked the teen to go into the bathroom to take photos of himself outside of the screenshot Jan in his message to hft pointed out that in the discussion when stated his age that gsha continue to talk to him but it was in the caption of the Instagram post that we can see further that it was hft not Jan that alleged that the pictures Gosha was requesting from the boy were pornographic in nature the second accusation which also surfaced the same date from hft was similar in the in the screenshots provided Gosha specifically says it's okay to be a little hard for the photos that he is requesting which most assume to mean the models genitalia hft noted in their caption that messages were deleted of gsha requesting underwear photos from the model however this post didn't have the same impact to the public firstly because the accuser was Anonymous so we don't actually know his age secondly that it came after the initial accusation and thirdly because it's common during the casting process which we know they were discussing because it's heavily implied in their first message to ask for photos of models in their underwear so as to see the shape of their body so primarily with the first accusation running more heavily in the public the story was shocking and as a result was quickly picked up by Supreme leak's news and and by diet Prada both at that time fashion drama accounts which specifically furthered the consensus that he was soliciting illicit photos of miners guiding public Fury to be pointed at gsha on the same day or the following day several more traditional Outlets like wwd ID and dazed contacted the team at Gosher rinsky and over Street Market and were quickly met with a statement from the brands this one screenshotted from hypebeast.com they said this was a street casting for a look book shoot the person sent a direct mail to us asking to be considered for the casting goosa did a FaceTime with him 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 in the mirror so he could show the rest of the team and have it on file this exchange has been altered and taken out of context it's clear there has been some modifications and deletions to to make it look bad where in fact it was a simple request for a photo to facilitate the street casting the person started contacting us very often demanding an answer about the casting and became a bit weird so gsha blocked him and we think this is why the person is trying to make Gosha look bad so this statement outlined several main rebuttal to the accusations one that the boy contacted them first about being Street cast something the team did regularly second the reason Gosha brought up the bathroom was because there was both a mirror and privacy away from those that he was with third modifications and delions have been made to take their conversation out of context to make Gosha look bad and fourth Gosha blocked the boy after the exchange became strange and they believe this is the motivation for the screenshots being sent to the media however even if this was true the controversy actually hadn't ended specifically diet Prada continued to post about these accusations including showing t-shirts where Gosha had printed his photography of young boys from earlier collections there was another screenshot from a Facebook post though the names are blurred out that accused Gosha in previous experiences with the poster to be sexually interested in minors and at some point attention was brought to gosha's previous alleged boyfriend Valentine fuv who was at the time of their relationship 16 years old though it has to be said that I couldn't find any evidence personally of the two actually dating only that Valentine was on gosh's team plus Jan posted a response to the rebuttal on the hft Facebook group in which he said that he was not knowingly being Street cast during the discussion and instead was contacting gsha regarding interviewing him for a school project so in reality the evidence that we have is very he said she said but the fury online at least from what I can remember was Swift and Direct in accusing gsha of pedophilia and Adas investigated the accusations but more or less all of the other big names around rubinsky including Adrien Joff at DOA Street Market made statements defending the designer however considering as fhtv pointed out that this was also in the height of the me to movement the push back that was coming from the public was heightened and led to most myself included actually believing that it was this controversy that ended his career but truly that's not certain he had already announced the reduction of the brand away from on season collections on the 4th of April earlier that year seemingly nothing came of the Adidas investigation into the claims and even in 2019 Adrien Joff at do Street Market made statements to say that they will continue to support gsha due to the extreme lack of evidence of these accusations it may well have been that his personal controversy ended the brand but because we don't have documentation we don't actually know know when or if the company itself was shuted so it's very hard to know what really caused the end of the company and if this was planned or if it was forced no further allegations have ever come up against scosa at least that I could find and com garon continued to support his new lines like gr uniforma which released on March 16th 2019 and actually had an Adidas collab in itself as shown here all up until 2022 at least when did actually part ways which is when I assumed the label was halted indefinitely through all of this time gsha has been rather quiet he was rarely discussed in fashion after the controversy and it seems as if he would never make a return that is until just this week from another personal project he came on board with the Yeezy team to work with the artist formerly known as Kanye West this obviously doesn't really help his controversal Public Image but it certainly got people talking about his name again which may just be his goal as according to this business of fashion article goosa has found new Financial backing and in the next year 2024 will aim to relaunch his names sake brand so I assume he's regained his intellectual property from K de garon who purchased it in 2011 we don't actually know any more about this Venture yet but until that time comes hopefully with everything outlined in this video you can see why he was so heralded as a designer for bringing forth that Eastern European Aesthetics and being exceptionally talented at transferring his design language into various lucrative collaborations and you can have more information regarding the controversy that may have ended his career this is a tricky one for me personally because I do not like to put my opinion into my videos but honestly my main takea away from researching this Scandal is that there's a lot of power in drama accounts this obviously can be both good or bad such as this wwd article which I will also link below notes but it's interesting that no one initially involved neither Jan nor Gosha said that these were lud nor nudity soliciting DMS only the drama channels did and of course those that retold the story I know a lot has been said about the ethics of said channels especially diet Prada in the Years following but it's a shame that these sources that really have the platform to give a voice to the voiceless has to become so controversial or hyperbolic in order to get intellectual share on social media on one side they need to do it to get noticed but on the other hand it hurts their credibility saying that I don't think we can blame the sources either currently the algorithm Praises that kind of behavior because it drives clicks and watch time and even before this Vogue magazine also went through a very difficult time of trying to understand what kind of balance they needed to get people to buy the magazine versus having actually useful content inside even myself personally I get less views if I don't use the word fall in my titles so I'm incentivized to highlight the negative even if that's completely not the tone of my videos in the end there was a lot at play in the fall of gosh's company both in his choices and in the controversy that leads it to be a fascinating study on human behavior and the media and algorithms that react to that I've recently been listening to this book visibility marketing on everand and he said something that reminded me of this situation I'm probably Mis quoting but it was something like what is marketing if not the understanding of human behavior this in my opinion will be what's interesting to discuss on how we move forward from situations like this and also other scandals like the Balenciaga Scandal that has such interesting parallels are we right to steer away from anything we find suspicious and untrustworthy in such a Cutthroat way when really we could be wrong should we continue to move together in situations like this using our consumer power to control what we want to see and what really is the best course of action for us as consumers when faced with a moral dilemma as difficult as this thank you for watching this video Please Subscribe and hit the like button for more if you're interested in similar videos but for beauty retailing check out my beauty Channel unders skin linked here and my patreon is linked Below in case you would like to support further special thank yous of course to my patreon patrons some of whose names are on the screen now

Channel: understitch,

Views: 38,245

Keywords: fashion marketing, fashion branding, fashion retailing, retail marketing, designer brands, fashion history, gosha rubchinskiy, lotta volkova, demna gvasalia, dover street market, adrien joffe, rei kawakubo, kanye west, ye, dover street market london

Id: tqz8W5xhSkk

Length: 26min 45sec (1605 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 23 2023