Worker’s Rights, But Make it Fashion
  February 12, 2026 Greetings, Meteor readers, Love is Blind is back, and frankly, I could stay in the pods forever with this batch of weirdos. But duty calls! In today’s newsletter, we tell you what’s extra-special about this year’s New York Fashion Week with a little help from former model and activist Sara Ziff. Plus, a quick check-in on the Olympics. Chilling in Ohio, Shannon Melero  WHAT’S GOING ONWalk the walk: There’s something different about the fall/winter New York Fashion Week this year, which officially kicked off yesterday in Tribeca. Its models will be protected by a new labor law called the Fashion Workers Act. The law guarantees protections so basic that they wouldn’t be notable in many other industries: access to their own contracts and agreements, overtime pay, meal breaks, limits on fees and expenses charged by their agencies, and recourse around late payments, harassment, and retaliation. These bedrock rights have been denied to models (who are often minors) for decades. The law is the result of years of tireless work from advocates, including Sara Ziff, the founder and executive director of the workers’ rights nonprofit Model Alliance. Ziff started modeling her freshman year of high school, landing jobs in places like Seventeen magazine and the Delia’s catalogue, both basically bibles for girls (okay, me) in the late nineties and early aughts. As her career and education progressed in tandem, she became aware not only of the well-publicized problems with the industry—like its obsession with extreme youth, thinness, and whiteness—but the conditions that scandals like the Epstein files have made clear: It’s also a hotbed for widespread financial and sexual exploitation.  SARA ZIFF AT WORK IN 2005 (VIA GETTY IMAGES) “People often see models as being privileged and don’t picture bad working conditions,” Ziff tells The Meteor. Most people don’t know, for example, that it’s commonplace for modeling agencies to hold power of attorney over their talent (even those over 18), which keeps models in the dark about their pay and scope of work. Models often end up in debt to their agencies; Ziff recalled to The New York Times how agencies would front wages that were late, then charge her 5 percent interest for the delay. And until the passage of the FWA, models had few legal avenues to fight back. Not that models haven’t tried. For decades, the fashion industry has fiercely pushed back on calls to improve labor conditions. Attempts to unionize have fizzled, a Diane Sawyer exposé failed to inspire concrete changes, and Ziff herself has been fighting for these protections since she founded Model Alliance in 2012. She chalks the resistance up to sexism, and an undervaluing of women’s work. “If you had middle-aged white men complaining about not being paid their earnings or being sent to castings and told to take off all their clothes,” Ziff says, “I don’t think anyone would stand for that.” So can we feel better watching NYFW’s runway shows knowing the models are protected? Well, it depends on how much they know. Ziff says the success of this law depends on spreading the word. “There are multiple layers of enforcement built into this law,” she says, like the ability for models to sue their agencies, a safe way to file complaints with the labor commissioner, and penalties for violations. But that enforcement “requires the models themselves to understand their rights and take action if they feel their rights have been violated.” Those rights go beyond compensation. Ziff has long understood that being young and financially vulnerable leaves women and girls in the fashion industry exposed to sexual abuse, too. “In light of the MeToo movement and ongoing news about Epstein,” she says, “people are starting to connect the dots that this almost entirely unregulated industry has been a breeding ground for abuse.”  That abuse has propelled Ziff’s advocacy years before the Fashion Workers Act became law. The Model Alliance was also instrumental in passing 2022’s Adult Survivors Act, which gave sexual assault survivors a one-year window to sue their assailants regardless of preexisting statutes of limitations. The law is responsible for high-profile cases like E. Jean Carroll’s claim against Donald Trump and Cassie’s lawsuit against Diddy, and has helped kickstart a MeToo 2.0 of sorts. Ziff filed her own claim in 2023, accusing Fabrizio Lombardo, a former Miramax executive and a close associate of Harvey Weinstein, of rape. (The case has since been resolved.) Ziff sees the Fashion Workers Act and the Adult Survivor’s Act as important first steps, but she’s not declaring victory anytime soon. “Patriarchy is alive and well,” she says. “We’re finally developing the language and the consciousness to try to dismantle it. But sadly, this is a life’s work and it’s probably going to take many lifetimes before we level the playing field.” —Nona Willis Aronowitz AND:
 PROTESTORS OUTSIDE OF STONEWALL IN MANHATTAN SHORTLY AFTER THE ANNOUNCEMENT THAT THE FLAG WOULD BE REMOVED. (VIA GETTY IMAGES)
 WEEKEND READING 📚On the grass people: Meet the woman behind this year’s Super Bowl halftime show. (Paper) On mother knows best: New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani wouldn’t be anywhere without the brilliant Mira Nair. (Vulture) On frenemies: Women on the right have a new name for women on the left that they hate: AWFULs (affluent white female urban liberal). Talk about white-on-white crime, damn. (Vox)  FOLLOW THE METEOR     Thank you for reading The Meteor! Got this from a friend? |
