Whew! And the plot thickens. We recently reported on claims by Leona Lewis that Michael Costello and his team made her feel uncomfortable during a dress fitting in 2014. Following the fitting, Leona alleges that he didn’t allow her to model the dress during a fashion show, which caused her to feel humiliated and insecure for years. Well, it looks like the claims got back to Michael because he took to his Instagram to dispute them.
In a series of posts, Michael displayed receipts including an email and Instagram post by Leona allegedly wearing one of his dresses. He expressed confusion by Leona’s earlier claims given that her team has allegedly requested dresses from him as recent as last month.
“If I made you feel bad in 2014 but you still wore my dresses and request them, can we try and figure out what got lost in translation with the dress you wore,” Michael wrote. “You looked so beautiful in it.”
As you may already know, folks on social media have been in an uproar regarding Chrissy Teigan’s resurfaced cyberbullying tweets. After the model issued a public apology for her actions, Michael stepped up to share his bullying experience with her. In his post, Michael included screenshots of a text thread with Chrissy where she allegedly tells him “racist people like you deserve to suffer and die.” Michael claimed Chrissy’s comments caused him to contemplate suicide.
In a turn-a-round of events, the day after Michael shared his Chrissy interaction, he was accused of bullying someone else. A Black boutique owner said he called her a “Black Ni**er bit**,” which resulted in a fight.
Leona is now the second Black woman to publicly claim Michael has done his fair share of bullying. In his response, Michael filmed a video of Leona’s post wearing a red dress designed by him.
“So sassy in my Michael Costello dress,” Michael said in the video while showing the post. “Is that a good thing or a bad thing cause I’m trying to figure out what happened. Still trying to figure it out. Everybody wants to come at me and complain at me and say a whole bunch of things about me, go ahead.”
As of Wednesday morning, there’s been no response by Leona despite Michael’s pleas to have a conversation. However, on Tuesday evening, Michael followed up his posts with a lengthy statement on his Instagram Story. He reiterated his earlier messages, while saying that he feels “blindsided” by her comments.
“I have lost tons of opportunities, sleepless nights, and I’m not in a good mental state of mind,” Michael wrote. “I wish you spoke to me directly instead of on Instagram, especially when I’m in my most vulnerable moment. After years of trauma and being blacklisted with receipts shown to me by friends and allies, I have been suicidal and often feel no purpose to live.”
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