While celebrities walked the red carpet at fashion’s biggest night yesterday, Mayor Zohran Mamdani spent the evening spotlighting the garment workers, tailors, and retail employees who actually make the fashion industry possible.
He released a photo series on Instagram showing six behind-the-scenes fashion workers — people who have spent decades sewing clothes, fitting suits, and stocking department stores while the billionaires who profit from their labor partied at the Met.
Mamdani wrote: “While the world’s eyes are on fashion’s biggest night, we’re turning ours to the garment, retail, and warehouse workers who keep the industry running. From true love found on the picket line to a free tailoring school out of a Brooklyn basement—meet the New Yorkers who make it all possible.”
The photo series — shot by New York-based artist Kara McCurdy and published by i-D magazine — featured six people whose names you’ve never heard but whose work makes fashion exist.
A master tailor from Saks Fifth Avenue. A Macy’s worker with nearly four decades of service. Tailors from Pakistan and Mexico running a free tailoring school out of a Brooklyn basement. A couple who met on a picket line fighting for workers’ rights in the garment district.
These are the people who make the $35,000 gowns celebrities wear for three hours at the Met Gala.
And Mamdani made sure the world saw them on the same night Anna Wintour made sure the world saw Jeff Bezos.
Because this year’s Met Gala was sponsored by Jeff Bezos and his wife Lauren Sánchez.
The man who made his fortune by squeezing warehouse workers, busting unions, and paying poverty wages to delivery drivers was the honorary chair of fashion’s most exclusive night — a fundraiser for the Metropolitan Museum of Art that charges $75,000 per ticket.
Protesters plastered New York City with posters reading “Boycott the Met Gala,” “Met Gala: Sponsored by those who support ICE,” and “Met Gala: Sponsored by labor exploitation.”
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