Suit Accuses the Fashion Designer Riccardo Tisci of Sexual Assault

Riccardo Tisci, the former creative director of Givenchy and Burberry and an Italian fashion designer whose name continues to surface when top industry jobs open up, was accused of sexual assault in a state lawsuit filed in New York this week.

Patrick Cooper, 35, said in the lawsuit that he was assaulted last June after he met Mr. Tisci in a Manhattan nightclub. Mr. Cooper said that he and Mr. Tisci, along with one other acquaintance, went to an East Harlem soul food restaurant called 2 Sisters 4 Brothers Restaurant & Lounge, where Mr. Cooper claims Mr. Tisci, 50, slipped a substance into his drink without his consent or knowledge that left him “so disorientated as to no longer know where he was” or what other people, particularly Mr. Tisci, were doing to him.

Mr. Cooper said that woke up naked in Mr. Tisci’s SoHo apartment, with Mr. Tisci naked next to him, and that he had been sexually assaulted.