Before the Gilded Glamour Gala, Vogue Employees Unionize

This is as fitting as a glove for daytime in the year 1890.

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Turns out the Met Gala theme “Gilded Glamour” is also kind of the running theme of Vogue these days. Because while Anna Wintour and perhaps other high-ranking executives at Vogue parent company Condé Nast Mrs. Astor around in their town cars with expense accounts and assistants and company-provided clothing allowances, their employees voted this week to unionize. (The group excludes employees of the New Yorker, Ars Technica, and Pitchfork which are already unionized.)

From the New York Times:

The employees in the newly formed Condé Nast union, including editorial, video and production staff, said in a statement that they were pushing for better pay, increased job security, and a stronger commitment to diversity and equity.

Gilded Age fashions are partly the inspiration for the next Costume Institute exhibit, In America: An Anthology of Fashion, and its opening Gala’s theme/dress code “Gilded Glamour” seems to be inspired by that period. However, this era was characterized not just by bustles and hot bearded railroad scions sipping port by the fireplace, it was also known for extreme income inequality and some labor organizing. While upper-crust members of New York society dined with finger bowls, millions of poor immigrants worked in sweatshops and lived in tenements in abhorrent conditions.