*Update as of 11/3/21, Instagram has finally removed the defamatory bio Highlight and post from Chotronette’s account falsely accusing me of bullying them after an internal review determined they violated community standards.
Over a year ago, Chotronette asked me to trade a dress for wings after they previously asked for a collaboration = to borrow my wings. Now, in retaliation for posting about my negative experience with them, they’ve created a targeted defamation and harassment campaign against me.
Below is the dress on their site (left), and the altered dress I ended up with (right) that had loose stitches, beads falling out, & in my opinion was not altered well to fit my measurements.
I was specific as could be, they assured me I wouldn't need a corset, etc. I assumed they sent the right size so at first I thought I could take out the shoulder seams to bring the waist down, assuming it was something different about my body like my torso being too long. Then I actually measured it before I got too far - waist was 3-4 inches too small!
I was probably too nice, I was trying to save them the trouble of having the gown shipped back and thought maybe I could swap with someone who would fit it so they could send me one that fits. They offered to send some fabric to extend the waist but I'm not a pro seamstress & let them know a replacement would be preferred. Taking out the shoulders would’ve been simple, if the issue was actually only it being too short on my torso, but taking apart the waistline and adjusting to fit my measurements I gave them was out of my league.
Chotronette, after I posted about my disappointment with them on Twitter, took my messages from before I realized they sent the wrong size and posted them in their IG Stories completely out of context to make it look as if we agreed on something totally different.
Below (left) is the false version of events they made up and posted on their Instagram Stories in retaliation for my exposing their business practices with me, and then made a Highlight with them titled ‘Fancy Fairy’ in their bio. As of today, July 20, 2021 it is all still up.
All the DMs to the right of their false story show the ACTUAL conversation. I’ve underlined the lies in their Story text claiming I insisted on them sending the size 38, that I wanted to alter it myself, etc. and put notes in the corresponding color by the actual messages that were sent via Instagram DM.
Before I go further, below are 2 screen recordings showing me scroll through all of the messages right before they finally paid my invoice, so you can see every part of the actual conversations with them and the dates. I want to be completely transparent, I don’t have anything to hide There would be too many pages of screenshots if I were to post absolutely everything because there was a frustrating amount of bad communication, unanswered questions and ghosting from them. So I’ll post the major parts as static images, and you can scroll thru these videos for more.
The first is all the Instagram DMs, which refutes the most of their libel about me. The second shows the emails.
The only things edited out are bits of private information like home addresses, tracking numbers & such.
After first trying to see if they had another customer needing my size I could swap with to save us both the trouble of international shipping, I asked if it was okay to sell it but it didn't sell, so we agreed I could exchange it but I for some reason * I * shipped it back to Romania on my bill.
They NEVER offered to ship it back on their DHL account initially, like they’re saying they did. Communication was choppy & lagged, they weren’t answering my questions about the customs form info, I paid $83 USD to ship via US Postal. They said they'd send pics of other dresses in my size - they never did.
I also noticed, their response time seemed to get worse after I mentioned displeasure with Trump and what he was doing to the post office, though that could be purely coincidental.
The package I sent was shipped back to me because, according to US Postal, they were notified but never picked up the package. More chats about this in the IG DMs you can see in the video, but they kept sending DHL to my door without sending me the label multiple times before getting one to me.
They told me they would fix the dress a few days after they receive it. That was late January - early February.
I didn’t get the dress back until around April 15. I did in fact let them know about the damaged dress and my unhappiness with the fit, and asked at that time for a partial reimbursement, right after receiving it. NOT a year after receiving it as they are claiming, in an effort to smear my reputation and make me look bad.
They told me for a few days they would let me know ‘in the morning’, and then ghosted me for a month before finally emailing me back to ask if I’d found out anything about the cost of altering the dress.
At this point, I was tired of dealing with the long periods of silence and they had also posted a photo of the wings modeled without crediting me - they tagged me in the photo yes, but those aren’t even seen usually until you click on the photo. They’ve fully credited everyone in their captions before, so the concept is not new to them.
When the second photo showing their dress paired with my wings was posted without credit, that is when I emailed them to express my disappointment with how they handled things and sent the invoice on July 7th.
People were asking about the wings, because there was no credit for them. However, they started deleting all these comments if they said anything about crediting the wing maker, which was even more upsetting.
In Instagram DMs they told me they fixed it to add credit, but that didn’t actually happen.
They insisted they never received the invoice, but I sent it twice and the below screenshot, near the bottom of it, shows this. They didn’t pay ‘in the morning’ as they said they would and did not respond to my emails for a couple days, so I assumed I was getting ripped off and that is when I finally posted publicly about it, on July 9th on Twitter and put a link to the thread in my IG Stories.
When they posted in their Stories with the false accusations and fabrications about me insisting on the size 38, I then posted in my main Instagram feed and on Facebook, showing 3 screenshots where I gave my measurements and told them I didn’t know what a size 38 was, their response that it would fit me without a corset, etc.
Then they went much lower.
They actually made an ‘anti-bullying’ post accusing me of bullying them, with more lies about the situation, painting me as a horrible and vicious person who encouraged people to bully them.
Keep in mind, this is a brand that’s been published in Vogue and other mainstream media, they have over 100K more followers than I do, with a much larger presence and are a bigger company - I’m just an individual artist - and they created a whole defamation campaign.
They also made a Highlight in their bio on Instagram containing the completely false version of what happened and titled it ‘Fancy Fairy’, which is where the Story screenshot of theirs near the top of this page is displayed.
They claimed that they were assaulted by insults, that the models were insulted by my followers, but I have yet to see any evidence that happened and had personally been telling people it’s no use to comment on their account since they’d delete comments and were blocking people no matter how polite they were.
Meanwhile, I was getting messages like these below
If anyone is leaving comments like that, with personal attacks and insults, that is not what I want to hear you’re doing. As I’ve said plenty of times it’s no use to go to their accounts to express yourself anyway, share from your own account if you want to say something about this.
There’s also a dangerous & harmful ableist stereotype throughout the comments, of making women out to be ‘crazy’ or ‘insane’ when they speak out about an injustice of some kind and it’s pretty disgusting to see them entertaining these. It helps their rumour to spread, of course.
I wonder what their base is made of if their complaints are about me being a ‘crazy social justice warrior’, seeming to mock me for being neurodivergent, and one says they refuse to buy from “an obvious woman” who puts pronouns in her emails and talks openly about mental health, as if posting pronouns and talking about mental health are bad things.
They are not.
And Chotronette had the nerve to respond in this sub thread and say they had to look up what neurodivergent means, and say they “hope she’s okay”.
This screams to me as a deflection of their own guilt over how they’ve handled our transaction, and no I don’t think they hope I’m okay.
You don’t create a whole targeted smear campaign that’s all fabricated if you care if someone’s okay.
Next, they tried to appear as innocent and generous souls, by asking me if I would donate the dress, saying they would donate the wings to an anti-bullying organization.
They created a post saying they had offered me to either have the wings sent back or have them donate them to ‘make it into a positive’ while still keeping up every lie and still insisting they never got the invoice.
So I made another invoice through Paypal, and also posted a listing on my website for them to pay from.
I told them donating wouldn’t work for me as it’s not in my budget and I already donate a small portion of every wing sale on my site to reputable charitable organizations. I left them nothing they could cherry pick paragraphs from to try and vilify me further.
Shortly after that, they did pay my invoice, but left the libel up.
That is almost certainly worse to me, what they’ve been doing has been incredibly malicious and hurtful.
I’ve asked them to remove the false claims, they’ve ignored that request completely.
I had to turn off my Message Requests as well because the harassment was too much, and too mean.
Think whatever you like about me, as far as your personal opinion. I don’t need everyone on the planet to like me
But to create a fake story about someone and weaponize it, and your larger following to bully someone under the guise of an anti-bullying campaign takes a special kind of cruelty.
I don’t regret speaking out about theft of my IP when it happens, when it appears to be deliberate and / or done by an equal size or larger entity normally. No I don’t actually attack people for no reason, I dryly and politely ask people who have posted my images without credit or permission to either credit or remove it please and thank you. Some people get incredibly angry over any indication they’ve done something wrong & go on the attack when it’s called to attention though, and I’d rather keep my distance from them.
I call things out only if it seems necessary to protect my income or brand, or warn the community about potential harm.
I don’t regret speaking out about social justice issues, or politics, or the environment. Or my own mental health, because seriously folks the fact that it’s so stigmatized is why people don’t know how to communicate with each other and build supportive relationships.
I am perfectly fine with people bothered by those things, not liking me. They are not who I’m trying to speak to anyway.
To accuse me of bullying though while actually instigating it by playing victim is so incredibly low.
A lot of people are bullied in their lives at some point. I was maybe a bit more than most, and yes my neurodivergence was usually the reason.
I was odd, paralyzingly anxious and socially awkward, I daydreamed all the time, couldn’t focus, and couldn’t talk to most people when I was very young. I was teased for my slow movement and slow reflexes, my hairiness, of course they made nicknames based on those features. I had no clue about boundaries or where mine should be.
I didn’t know how to refuse the company of my ‘friend’ who sexually threatened me in the school bathroom and repeatedly bullied me.
She and her friend eventually got a lot of the class to join in on mocking me for not talking, for having my head in the clouds, made fun of my appearance until I was in tears. I was rarely ever not anxious around people.
THAT’S bullying, that’s harassment. A disappointed customer is not.
I eventually learned last year from another friend in school that she witnessed my bully’s father being physically abusive to her mother at a sleepover, which explained so much. I don’t know what ever happened to her but I do honestly hope she was able to heal and break the cycle of abuse and I wish she had gotten help earlier in life.
I’ve been a trauma-induced people-pleaser for most of my life, so I’m learning, and since ADHD and ASD can both show up in traits as naivety and being overly trusting, trusting people who didn’t deserve that trust is a repeated mistake in my past. I didn’t think that’s what was happening with Chotronette until it was too far involved. Yes I should have been more firm about what I expected out of the dress at the start and questioned the size when they first sent the dress, but I haven’t acted out of hate.
I felt I was taken advantage of and wanted to spare potential brides or collaborators of the same troubles if I could.
Ironically, you’ll see Chotronette and other people simultaneously criticizing my speaking out about this as ‘bullying’, while praising Chotronette for the same thing.
Whether they intentionally didn’t keep their end of the deal or just got careless, I’m not sure, but the defamation campaign is inexcusable. Intentionally lying to tarnish someone’s rep is not the way to deal with an unhappy customer or collaborator. Really not a good look.
I’ve never seen evidence of the bullying they claim they received, below are public comments on their post with the wings in it that’s now been deleted. They were all only bringing up crediting the wings, a couple mentioned that they didn’t respect our collaboration and contained no personal attacks, but most of them were blocked for it.
If there’s any confusion, or you think you’re missing something, again, check out the screenshot videos to go through everything from start to finish, starting with the DMs
I will be happy to correct anything here that is factually incorrect. There’s probably even more I could add to this but I’m trying to avoid my tendency to info-dump. There’s already plenty here that shows clearly there’s deliberate misrepresentation on Chotronette’s end.
Oh and by the way, no one knows which anti-bullying organization the wings are being donated to as of this day. Not a peep about this mystery organization.
My money is on either Melania Trump’s anti-bullying org, or it was all a sham and a PR stunt to save their image. This show they put on definitely does have the same flavor as her ‘Be Best’ campaign.
A little justice! As of 11/3/21 the defamatory bio Highlight they titled ‘Clarification’ which was previously named ‘Fancy Fairy’ as well as their post falsely accusing me of bullying among other things, has been removed by Instagram for defamation after an internal review.
I’m grateful for this small win, however this post will remain up as long as there is no public apology for the lies spread about me to their over 200K followers. Damage has already been done during the last 3 months while those posts stayed up and I won’t easily forgive them for it.
