Hours after Chrissy Teigen issued an agonized apology Monday for cyberbullying teenaged TV personality Courtney Stodden 10 years ago, the model was hit with a new bullying accusation from fashion designer Michael Costello, who said she drove him to suicidal despair by rallying her friends to blacklist him after she falsely accused him of being a racist.
Costello’s accusation, posted on Instagram, was one of many reactions to Teigen’s apology Monday, which was shared as an open letter on Medium.
After the Twitter star and lifestyle influencer said she was “so sorry” and living with the “crushing weight of regret,” not everyone expressed a willingness to let her easily move past her history of posting “awful” tweets, with some suggesting she only apologized because she was afraid of losing more brand sponsorships.
Costello’s accusation is sure to further complicate Teigen’s redemption efforts. In his own lengthy statement on Instagram, the “Project Runway” alum said he has been living with “deep, unhealed trauma” for the past seven years because of Teigen’s actions.
“I wanted to kill myself and I still am traumatized, depressed and have thoughts of suicide,” he wrote.
Costello claims that Teigen “formed her own opinion of me” in 2014 after seeing a “photoshopped comment” that was “floating around on the internet.” The comment contained a racist slur, and Costello said it was created by a “disgruntled employee” to make it look like he wrote it.
Costello said Teigen, the wife of singer John Legend, contacted him via Instagram and accused him of being a racist. At the time, Costello had already appeared on “Project Runway” in 2010 and garnered noticed for dressing celebrities, including Beyonce at the 2014 Grammy Awards.
When Costello asked Teigen to call him so he could explain that he was the “victim of vindictive cyber-slander,” he said she refused to listen. She told him that his “career was over” and that all “doors will be shut from there on.”
Costello shared a text from Teigen, which said: “Racist people like you deserve to suffer and die. You may as well be dead. Your career is over, just watch.”
Costello also said that Teigen lived up to her words to use her growing celebrity power to try to end his career.
“Throughout the next few years, I would book jobs only to be pulled off last minute with no explanation,” Costello explained.
Costello said he would regularly get texts and calls from mutual friends, saying that Teigen and a powerful stylist in the fashion industry had gone out of their way “to threaten people and brands” to not work with him.
“So many nights I stayed awake, wanting to kill myself,” Costello said. “I didn’t see the point of living. There was no way I can ever escape from being the target of powerful elites in Hollywood, who actually do have powers to close doors with a single text.”
The backstory of the fake racist comment attributed to Costello also has its own complications, according to a Twitter thread by freelance writer Jess Sims.
An employee of Costello’s reportedly purchased a dress by a Black female designer, which Costello then shared on his Instagram account, which was seen as an effort by Costello to pass it off as his own, according to the thread. Costello’s sister and creative partner, Stephanie Costello, later admitted on Instagram to posting the dress photo as a misguided way to suggest that the female designer had copied one of their designs.
The Shade Room Instagram gossip site also shared a post in which the female designer said she had a run-in with Costello at a fabric store during which he called her a racist slur.
It’s also not clear how much damage Teigen did to Costello’s career. In recent years, he’s become known for being good friends with Lady Gaga and for designing outfits for other powerful women in entertainment, including Cardi B, Kylie Jenner and Nicki Minaj.
Nonetheless, Costello’s accusations became a top trending topic on Twitter Tuesday, the day after Teigen’s apology ruled the platform.
Some on Monday praised Teigen for issuing a “genuine” and heartfelt apology, in which she appeared to take responsibility and admitted she had been an insecure and immature “troll” who posted snarky comments about other celebrities for Twitter attention. But others questioned her sincerity — given the vicious things she had said to Stodden and given that she let so much time pass before publicly apologizing.
“You explicitly and repeatedly encouraged a child to kill themselves,” tweeted artist Matt Crump. “That’s not ‘snark,’ that’s just pure evil. This is just another transparent attempt to salvage your career.”
Someone else wrote: “I’m pretty sure the remorse goes as far as her paychecks getting slashed thanks to sponsorships being ripped away. Too much for too long, you reveled in being nasty and hateful to so many people @chrissyteigen, you haven’t got enough years left in the tank to fix all that.”
Others thanked Teigen for her honesty and said that most people have done things, or posted things online, that they regret.
“Honestly let‘s go dig up the old tweets of EVERYONE public figure or not,” someone else wrote. “Chrissy‘s behavior was unacceptable but I think it‘s fair to say she has grown a lot. I‘m willing to give her a chance to prove that to me.”
Teigen’s apology Monday actually was her second since the scandal erupted in May when an interview with Stodden in the Daily Beast resurfaced the model’s old tweets.
Stodden, who is now 26 and identifies as nonbinary, using they/them pronouns, told the Daily Beast they were publicly shamed by Teigen and other celebrities in 2011 and 2012 after they became a media sensation for their troubling marriage and unconventional behavior.
Stodden told the Daily Beast: “(Teigen) wouldn’t just publicly tweet about wanting me to take ‘a dirt nap’ but would privately DM me and tell me to kill myself. Things like, ‘I can’t wait for you to die.’”
Teigen also reportedly mocked troubled star Lindsay Lohan, who has admitted to cutting herself in the past, and publicly called “Teen Mom” star Farrah Abraham “a whore.”
After Stodden’s interview and other revelations resurfaced about Teigen’s past online behavior, she issued her first apology on May 12 and stayed away from social media until Monday, but major retailers began to distance themselves from her, including Target, Bloomingdale’s and Macy.
Last week, Variety reported that Teigen bowed out of a guest role performing a voiceover in Mindy Kaling’s Netflix comedy series “Never Have I Ever.” Safely, the company that Teigen co-founded with good friend, Kris Jenner, also decided to stop having the supermodel front promotional efforts for their products, The Sun reported.
