Fashion Week can be a powerful tool for luxury brands to connect with customers, generate media attention, and showcase their newest offerings in an increasingly crowded market. But the seasonal runway shows are increasingly only one part of a broader calendar of events designed to engage top clients. Private dinners, parties, destination experiences, and other high-touch events have become an important part of how brands cultivate relationships with their most valuable customers and create a broader world around their products.
Behind these experiences is a less visible – but equally important – set of considerations: the issues that can arise when employees, contractors, clients, and guests come together outside the ordinary workplace.
As brands invest more heavily in Fashion Week shows and a calendar of special events throughout the year, employees are increasingly called on to represent the brand and manage client relationships beyond the traditional store or office, from accompanying clients to shows and dinners to coordinating access and logistics. These settings can blur some of the lines that are clearer in a traditional workplace, including when employees are working, where that work is taking place, and who qualifies as an employee in the first place.
When Events Become the Workplace
When employees attend events, particularly those located off-site or outside regular working hours, the distinction between attending as a guest and working as an “on the clock” representative of the brand can matter. An hourly employee working at a New York Fashion Week event, for example, generally must be compensated for that time, including overtime for hours worked over 40 in a week.
As employees increasingly work across stores, offices, events, and even different cities and countries, these arrangements can also raise questions about where work is legally taking place and which jurisdictions may come into play. Fashion Week provides a particularly useful example.
In D’Anzieri v. Harrison Global LLC, for example, the plaintiff worked for a transportation company that shuttled models at NYFW. She alleged that her supervisor made sexually charged comments regarding her work with models. Although the company was headquartered in Massachusetts, the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York initially found it had personal jurisdiction over the company because the plaintiff was assigned to perform work related to New York Fashion Week.
After extensive discovery, the court found, two and a half years later, that the company was unaware that she was working from New York, the alleged comments were made telephonically while the plaintiff was working remotely, and although she was assigned to work pertaining to Fashion Week, she was not required to be physically present in New York and her supervisor did not know she was there. The matter was transferred to a Massachusetts federal court, where the parties continued to litigate before ultimately stipulating to dismiss the case.
Access, Assignments & Discrimination
The highly curated nature of exclusive fashion events can also create employment issues in less obvious ways. Access itself can carry value within the luxury business, particularly as brands use runway shows, dinners, trips, and other experiences to build relationships with important clients. Decisions about which employees attend, where they are seated, which clients or executives they accompany, and who receives access to particularly desirable events or experiences may therefore have professional implications, even when they fall outside the traditional workplace.
Decisions about which employees attend, which clients or executives they accompany, and who receives particularly desirable assignments or opportunities may carry professional value, even when they fall outside the traditional workplace. The U.S. Supreme Court’s 2024 decision in Muldrow v. St. Louis held that an employee challenging a job transfer need only show some harm to the terms or conditions of employment, rather than significant harm. Against that backdrop, decisions made around brand events could potentially become relevant when they form part of a broader pattern of differential treatment based on age or another protected characteristic.
The scope of potential claims can also vary by jurisdiction. New York City law, for example, protects employees from discrimination based on characteristics, including height, weight, and hairstyle, in addition to more familiar protected characteristics.
The reality is that not every employee will have their choice of event, assignment, or role, particularly around key events like Fashion Week. But having a clear and fair basis for those decisions, whether seniority, existing client relationships, or employee preference, can help avoid the perception that an employee’s appearance or other protected characteristics played a role.
Who Is an Employee?
Fashion Week and other brand events frequently bring together a web of outside vendors, contractors, and staffing agencies, from models and photographers to DJs and security personnel. As these events become more elaborate, the network can expand further to include hospitality staff, transportation providers, production teams, and other workers involved in delivering the client experience.
That can raise questions not only about contractual responsibility when something goes wrong, but also about whether individuals classified as independent contractors are, as a matter of law, employees.
The degree of control exercised over a worker can be particularly significant. In Matter of Pomponio, a New York appellate court upheld a determination that a Fashion Week “runner” who transported digital image cards for Getty Images was an employee. Among other things, Getty provided instructions, monitored deliveries, restricted the runner’s ability to select a replacement, and supplied Getty identification and branded envelopes.
The case illustrates how the practical realities of a working relationship can carry more weight than the label attached to it, an issue that can become particularly relevant during large-scale events that depend heavily on temporary and freelance labor.
Beyond the Workplace
Fashion Week and related brand events also take workplace relationships beyond the traditional workplace, often bringing employees into sustained contact with clients, customers, guests, and other third parties. For employees responsible for high-value client relationships, those interactions may extend across dinners, parties, shows, travel, and other settings that are social in appearance but closely connected to their work.
In certain circumstances, employers can face liability for harassment involving those individuals, even when the conduct occurs outside an office or retail store. In Glapion v. Saks Fifth Avenue LLC, a Louisiana court declined to dismiss claims against Saks where a salesperson alleged that she was repeatedly harassed by a customer and that her employer failed to adequately intervene. Although the allegations arose in a store, the case highlights the potential for similar issues when employees interact with customers and guests at off-site events.
THE BIGGER PICTURE: The employment issues associated with Fashion Week and other exclusive events do not necessarily end when the show does. A successful runway presentation or client event can generate additional orders, appointments, and client requests, creating new demands on corporate and retail employees and potentially raising questions about classification, compensable time, and overtime.
More broadly, as luxury brands invest in runway shows, private dinners, destination experiences, and other forms of client engagement, the work behind those experiences increasingly extends beyond the store or office. As the luxury business moves further into events, hospitality, and experiences, the workplace is moving with it.
Keith A. Markel is Chair of Morrison Cohen LLP’s Labor & Employment Department and Co-Chair of the Luxury Brands practice.
Alana Mildner Smolow is Counsel in Morrison Cohen LLP’s Labor & Employment Department and Luxury Brands practice.
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