Los Angeles fashion designer Maxie James is doubling down on her claims that celebrity fashion designer Michael Costello called her the n-word.
Costello has been all over the headlines after he put Chrissy Teigen on blast for sending him harassing messages on social media. Costello says that he was suicidal after she wished death on him over racist messages he says were photoshopped.
The “Project Runway” contestant made the allegations via an Instagram post on Monday afternoon.
‘” I didn’t want to do this, but I can not be happy until I speak my mind. I need to heal and in order for me to do that I must reveal what I’ve been going through,” he wrote.
“I wanted to kill myself and I still am traumatized, depressed, and have thoughts of suicide.”
The designer says Teigen’s harassment began after Teigen left a comment on his Instagram page in 2014, accusing him of racism after seeing a Photoshopped comment. The comment was allegedly mocked up by a “former disgruntled employee” to embarrass him publicly.
But James says the star calling Teigen out for her bullying ways is hypocritical.
“For Michael Costello, we had an encounter about… seven years ago. So literally the situation that he’s been talking about on the internet, as far as trying to call Chrissy out on her bullying him, that was the exact incident that him and I had gotten into. And she actually was like, defending me when she did say those words to Michael Costello,” she told The Jasmine Brand.
While she did not condone Teigen’s actions, she says the comment he says was photoshopped had not been altered.
“It was really, really bad. But it veered from him saying it to me online. Now, he for sure said it online, it was not a photoshop, that is his PR team spinning it around.”
James then explained her encounter with Costello in detail:
“He purchased a dress on my website. He then posted the dress the very next day in his showroom with his logo in the background and just like, resold it. My dress was $200 on my website, like $1000 is how much he was selling it for. And I was just so devastated because I was like, just starting.”
She said she tried to reach out to him, but he did not respond. So she posted the picture of the purchase receipt on social media. Costello went off on her in the comments.
Then things went haywire:
“[He] was going off on people in the comments of the PicCollage that I posted. And that is when he was like, ‘Oh, you’re defending that Black…’ you know, ‘blah blah blah.’ So that’s where it started from.”
The designer says his bullying did not end there.
“So like a year later I go to a fabric store and I see him. I instantly notice him but he did not notice me at first. I went to go sit down, and the fabric store owner came up to me and was like ‘Oh Maxie, it’s gonna be another 30 minutes until your rolls of fabric are ready.’ So I think once he heard my name is when it registered, like, ‘Oh, that’s her.’ So he comes up to me, I’m like, sitting down, and he comes up to me and he’s like, ‘Oh I remember you. You’re that Black n*gger bitch that tried to sabotage my business.'”
