On Monday morning, while preparations for the Met Gala were underway, labor unions from across the country staged an entirely different kind of fashion show in the Meatpacking District of Manhattan.
At the Ball Without Billionaires, the spotlight was not on A-list celebrities or the gala’s controversial lead sponsors and honorary chairs Jeff Bezos and his wife, Lauren Sánchez Bezos, but on the workers that power the companies under Bezos’s vast empire. Those include the staff at Amazon, Whole Foods and The Washington Post.
“The Met Gala tells a story about who matters, who gets celebrated,” said April Verrett, president of the Service Employees International Union. “And we decided to make ourselves the protagonists.”
Amazon delivery drivers, warehouse workers and former Washington Post staffers strutted down the cobblestoned runway, twirling and dancing in outfits by local designers while the audience held up cards that read “You Can’t Buy Cool” and “Labor Is Art.”
“There’s one thing more powerful than a billionaire,” said Lisa Ann Walter, who stars on “Abbott Elementary” and was one of the emcees of the event. “And that’s a union.” Dressed in a white pantsuit with the words “Art Belongs to Everyone” scrawled on the back, Walter skewered Bezos, at one point describing him as a “Q-tip with a yacht.”
At the end of the show, when the models came out to take a bow, the audience showered the stage with sunflowers and roses.
“Most of my co-workers work two jobs,” said Mary Hill, a 72-year-old Amazon warehouse worker from Raleigh, N.C., who walked the runway dressed in an outfit by Labyrinthave. “Why is that, when we work for one of the richest people in America?”
“Make it make sense,” Hill, a co-founder of Carolina Amazonians United for Solidarity and Empowerment, also known as CAUSE, added.
This was one of the many events and campaigns that have taken over the streets of New York City in the last few days to protest Bezos’s involvement with the Met Gala. Critics see him as a figurehead for vast economic inequality, and the gala as an unseemly display of opulence amid a surging anti-rich sentiment.
In other words, the vibes, for many, are off.
Alisha Haridasani Gupta is a Times reporter covering style and pop culture.
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