Zang Gets Zinged! Toi Repeatedly Tweaked by Texting Sex Hoaxer

On the afternoon of Monday, Feb. 11, for the second time in a little over a month, all the contacts in designer Zang Toi’s e-mail address book received a gay-chat invitation supposedly issued by the 46-year-old rag-trade renegade, a favorite of actresses Sharon Stone and Eva Longoria, who showed his fall 2008 collection at Bryant Park on Friday, Feb. 8.

“Hello, You have received a personal invitation from your friend (zangtoi13) to join them at Gayguyschat.com,” the message began. Mr. Toi insisted that he had never heard of the site before the first blast was sent on Jan. 8, as reported elsewhere. (After which he followed up with an e-mail asking his pals and associates to “please please please DISREGARDS it!”)

“[The responsible party] probably have my entire address book in there,” Mr. Toi told the Transom over the phone. “They are so stupid—they send it to all the women. What’s wrong with these people?” He laughed. “I was in bed for 15 hours yesterday. I got up and of course I got all these e-mails from all my friends.”

Mr. Toi shrugged off the first incident, but by this point? “It’s annoying,” he said. “After a while, it’s not even funny anymore.” He added that a few gay friends of his were looking for him on the site, which features homoerotic videos, photos and stories. “And I said, ‘I bet you wish you could find me in there!’”

Irritating digital hiccups aside, Mr. Toi has been enjoying the afterglow of his successful show. On Sunday, he said, a group of Saudi Arabian princesses—“a new group of princess I have never worked with before”—spent the day at his studio, where they bought up the entire collection. “And then I went to the gym,” he said.