TODAY! Model Alliance Rallies for Fashion Workers Act to Regulate Industry Ahead of "Gilded Age" Met Gala

NEW YORK (05/01/2022) (readMedia)-- On May Day, the Model Alliance will rally for the Fashion Workers Act, a piece of pro-labor legislation that would regulate predatory management agencies that currently operate without oversight, on the steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art ahead of the next day's "Gilded Age" themed Met Gala. The group will be joined by, photographer Tony Kim, the first openly transgender model to be hired by Chanel Teddy Quinlivan, L'Oréal Global Ambassador Nidhi Sunil, and bill sponsors Senator Brad Hoylman and Assembly Member Karines Reyes, and others.

Watch the announcement on the Model Alliance Instagram, available here.

Fashion is big business in New York – Fashion Week alone generates close to $600 million in income each year for the State, and yet, the creative workforce behind the industry's success – models, influencers, stylists, makeup artists, hair stylists, and other creative artists – are not afforded basic labor protections in New York. The Fashion Workers Act would close this loophole and create basic protections for fashion's creative workforce.

The theme of this year's Met Gala – hosted by Vogue, which is facing its own unionizing efforts within Condé Nast – is the "Gilded Age." The Instagram post announcing the theme invites attendees to romanticize a time when four families controlled 1 percent of the entire country's wealth, while garment workers – who were largely women and children – faced unsanitary living conditions in crowded tenements and dangerous working conditions, which led to the preventable deaths of 146 workers in the tragic Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire.