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Fashion Design Icon Riccardo Tisci Accused of Drugging, Assaulting Man
Kilian Melloy READ TIME: 3 MIN.
Former Givenchy director Riccardo Tisci is the defendant in a lawsuit accusing him of "predatory, sexual, and unlawful assault and battery," UK newspaper the Independent reported.
"My intentions were never to end up in Riccardo Tisci's bed," New York City resident Patrick Cooper, 35, told the newspaper.
Cooper's claim is that he went out with Tisci, whom he met through a friend they had in common. Tisci, the mutual friend, another man, and Cooper dined together last June, the claim says, before alleging that the designer slipped Cooper a drug. After finishing his drink, Cooper's complaint claims, he became "disoriented, confused, impaired, intoxicated, unaware of his actions and surroundings, and unable to comprehend what was going on."
"I remember sipping the drink," Cooper told the newspaper, "and I don't remember anything else." The next morning, the suit claims, Cooper "woke up in the former Givenchy creative director's multimillion-dollar townhouse, naked, without any idea how he got there," the newspaper account relayed.
"When I woke up, he was kissing me," Cooper, who identifies as bisexual, asserted to the Independent.
The suit "alleg[es] the 50-year-old dosed him with an unknown substance in order to make him 'so disorientated as to no longer know where he was, what he was doing, or what other people, particularly [Tisci], was [sic] doing to him," the writeup detailed.
Cooper told the newspaper that he left Tisci's townhouse and headed straight to a hospital in order to undergo testing for rape. When he called his friend, Cooper says, the friend gave him the understanding that he had simply disappeared the night before.
"He's upset at me, saying, 'Why would you leave me? I couldn't find you,'" Cooper told the Independent. "He said he was asking everyone if they knew where I was, so I told him, 'I don't remember last night at all.'"
Tisci, too, claimed to remember nothing when Cooper phoned him, the account detailed. Saying he didn't know who Cooper was, he asked for a photo, Cooper said.
"I sent the picture, and he goes, 'I still don't remember you,'" Cooper told the Independent. "I told him, 'How do you not remember me? I was at your house.' He goes, 'Oh yeah, I remember you now. Nothing happened.' I said, 'I woke up naked.' He said, 'No, you had clothes on.' And that's when I knew."
Cooper filed a report with the police.
The NYPD told the newspaper that the department "takes sexual assault and rape cases extremely seriously, and urges anyone who has been a victim to file a police report so we can perform a comprehensive investigation, and offer support and services to survivors."
Tisci hung up when the newspaper called, the Independent said, and his agent declined to comment.
"A native of Apulia, Italy, Tisci has dressed stars including – among countless others – Beyoncé, Adele, Meryl Streep, Rhianna, Madonna, Cate Blanchett and Kim Kardashian, who wore a Tisci-designed dress for her 2014 wedding to rapper Kanye West," the newspaper account recalled.
"He left Givenchy in 2017, after 12 years, and in 2018 was appointed chief creative officer at Burberry, where he stayed until September 2022."
He's been working on a handbag line with Nike, the writeup added.
Cooper has retained legal representation and "is now seeking compensatory and punitive damages to be determined in court," the Independent reported.
Kilian Melloy serves as EDGE Media Network's Associate Arts Editor and Staff Contributor. His professional memberships include the National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association, the Boston Online Film Critics Association, The Gay and Lesbian Entertainment Critics Association, and the Boston Theater Critics Association's Elliot Norton Awards Committee.
