Hours before Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez Bezos took their places as sponsors and honorary chairs of the Met Gala, a different kind of fashion event was unfolding across town.
Ahead of the gala, hundreds of workers, organizers, and advocates gathered in the Meatpacking District in downtown New York for the Ball Without Billionaires, a worker-led fashion show designed to contrast the one at the museum.
Organized by a coalition of labor groups including the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), the Strategic Organizing Center, and the Amazon Labor Union, the event cast current and former workers from Amazon, Whole Foods, The Washington Post, Starbucks, and Uber as models.
The ball’s message was straightforward. While the 2026 Met Gala’s theme is “Fashion Is Art,” the workers’ counter-theme was “Labor Is Art.”
“The Met Gala tells a story about who matters, who gets celebrated,” said April Verrett, president of SEIU. “And we decided to make ourselves the protagonists.”
“Most of my co-workers work two jobs,” said Mary Hill, a 72-year-old Amazon warehouse worker and co-founder of Carolina Amazonians United for Solidarity and Empowerment (CAUSE). “Why is that, when we work for one of the richest people in America? Make it make sense.”
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