What are the allegations against Tom Sachs? Artist addresses 2023 workplace scandal in recent podcast

On September 26, artist Tom Sachs appeared on The Complex Sneakers Podcast in the wake of his new collaboration with Nike. Earlier, Nike severed its ties with its collaborator Sachs after allegations of s*xual harassment and inappropriate behaviour surfaced against the artist in 2023.

As per Curbed, which was the first publication to report on the allegations, staff members who formerly worked in Sachs’s artist studio accused him of creating a toxic environment at the workplace. The publication also noted that employees accused Sachs of s*xually inappropriate behavior. Reporting on the allegations against Sachs, Curbed wrote:

“[Sachs] called a storage room in the basement the ‘rape room’; in 2016, he changed it to the ‘consent room’…And while Sachs sometimes required his employees to wear uniforms, he himself was often in formfitting underwear in the studio, according to seven former members.”

The news outlet shared that all allegations were denied by Sachs’s studio. According to the publication, however, a female employee of Sachs shared that she was scared of being in the studio with Sachs at night, and others revealed that the artist crossed boundaries and often brought up the matter of employees’ s*x lives.

The serious accusations made by Sachs’ employees against him upended the impression that the artist had created about his studio and work ethics, as per Curbed. According to Artnet, Sachs self-admittedly called his studio ‘a cult.’

However, when Sachs’s studio’s employees accused him of running ‘a cult,’ they did not use the word for its supposed positive connotations, as per Artnet. Sachs’ employees detailed the serious ways in which he crossed professional boundaries and opened up about the derogatory statements made towards them by Sachs. As per Curbed, most of his employees had signed a non-disclosure agreement, and hence could only detail the harassment anonymously.

In addition to allegations of harassment and verbal abuse, multiple employees accused Sachs of making them do work for which they weren’t paid, according to the report by Curbed.

Tom Sachs on the allegations against him

Tom Sachs, who appeared on The Complex Sneakers Podcast, shared his experience of working with Nike on its latest sneaker release, and addressed the allegations against him due to which the brand had earlier dropped him.

The issue of allegations against Sachs was brought up by the hosts. Sachs responded to it immediately and said:

“Well, I work really hard to make sure that my studio is a place of respect and inclusivity…my studio includes my community at Nike and Beaverton and the people I work with there and the public.”

Sachs further stressed that the process of being attentive to the allegations against him did influence his work, and the new sneaker indeed was an expression of that. He said:

“You know, I have done a lot of listening and I’m really proud of the work that we've done and I'm look and I think the Marsard 3 is an expression of all that so we just keep moving forward.”

When asked to shed more light on the process of transformation, Sachs candidly shared:

“I just think it's important to respect people's feelings and hear them…It's a process. Nothing's perfect, but I think it's important to acknowledge what happened and to like own it, and just move forward and and always just strive to make a place excellent and safe and inclusive…So, we’re always working on making the studio excellent and safer and better constantly.”

Sachs also shared that the process of learning and transforming was something that he was constantly working on, with regard to his studio practice.