Activists stage fashion show and place urine bottles at Met Gala in protest of Jeff Bezos
Among various stunts pulled off at this year’s Met Gala, different activist groups also took to the streets of New York, staging a fashion show and placing bottles of urine at the event in protest of Jeff Bezos.
This year’s fashion elite event was sponsored by Amazon owner Jeff Bezos and his wife Lauren Sànchez Bezos at a cost of around $10 million, which made them the co-chairs and lead donors of the event.
However, due to Bezos’ support of Donald Trump, as well as the poor treatment that employees of Amazon allegedly receive, various activist groups also made their voices clear over the throngs of the fashion elite.
According to The Independent, the UK-based protest group Everyone Hates Elon took to New York and placed 300 bottles of fake urine around the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Announcing the stunt, they wrote on Instagram, “Urine Trouble Jeff!”, before adding, “His own workers sued him for being forced to piss in bottles, while Jeff is worth $280bn. So while the Met Museum gets ready for his glitzy do, we delivered them OVER 300 bottles of piss.”
The stunt came in reference to the fact that various lawsuits have been filed against the multi-billion-dollar company in recent years, including recent cases where employees have allegedly had their contracts terminated due to work-related illnesses and injuries, and allegedly not being allowed to have bathroom breaks.
The group also later posted pictures of messages emblazoned on the Chrysler Building – where Bezos owns a penthouse – and the Empire State Building, which said, “No red carpet for Trump’s billionaires”, “If you can buy the Met Gala, you can pay more tax”, and “Boycott the Bezos Met Gala”.
To this end, the group Labor Is Art also put on their own separate fashion show in New York on the night of the Met Gala, referencing the main event’s theme of Fashion is Art.
Unlike the group Everyone Hates Elon, this collective of Amazon workers and unions spoke to The Guardian about how they were protesting the fact that the hands of the fashion industry were being turned by billionaires like Bezos into an unrecognisable and unsustainable space.
