The Lingering Fashion Acts in NYS Senate

Models walk a runway. Credit:José Goulão (CC BY-SA 2.0) via Wikimedia Commons

New York State is lingering over its decision to pass various pieces of legislation targeting the fashion industry to combat the damaging environmental impact and working conditions for many. 

The Fashion Social and Accountability Act, known as just The Fashion Act, will hold clothing and footwear retailers doing business in New York with an annual revenue of $100 million to disclose social and environmental due diligence policies. According to the Council of Fashion Designers of America, “The proposed legislation establishes a community benefit fund to implement one or more environmental benefit projects that directly and verifiably benefit environmental justice communities.”

Non-compliant businesses may have a fine of up to 2% of their annual revenue. It would go towards benefitting environmental projects, workers and local communities. There are no sponsors for this bill, and it has yet to pass the committee senate stage of this process. 

Another bill trying to vnnmake its way into the New York Senate is the New York State Fashion Workers Act. This legislation would help the models and creatives within the New York fashion realm. If passed, this act would require model management companies to implement things like providing workers with copies of their contracts and agreements, paying them within 45 days of completing a job and implementing a zero-tolerance policy for abuse. 

New York State Senators Andrew Gounardes and Robert Jackson are the co-sponsors of this bill. Those who have experience within the industry who know about this bill support it, but have their critiques.

“There’s a lot of vagueness in the bill,” said Anthony Millero, a professor of fashion merchandising at Marist College. “I think there’s definitely room for some people to try to get around things.”

With his background in environmental issues within fashion, Millero stands with the Fashion Act passing. Yet, outside of the bill itself, he has observed that media coverage has been relatively silent, along with his students being unaware of its existence. 

Millero has been observing that with more improvement in the fashion world in Europe, his students are less focused on the legislation happening with fashion sustainability domestically.  

His view on the Fashion Workers Act is the belief that this has a better chance of passing first, considering it regulates labor at its heart. Millero highlighted the non-billed hours worth of work models and creatives of a shoot have to do – including attending meetings and not always obtaining a contract – can get them cheated out of money for that time spent.

“From a labor perspective, any kind of labor lawyer would look at this and say this needs to be corrected,” said Millero. 

Though New York State has been stagnant on both of these bills, California can’t say the same with the passing of its Responsible Textile Disposal and Reuse Act. 

Introduced in March 2023 by Senator Josh Newman, this bill “requires producers to establish a stewardship programme for the collection and recycling of ‘covered products,’ which include any apparel, textile or textile article that is unsuitable for reuse by a consumer in its current state or condition.”

Recycling the fibers has been the focal point of this bill since many fast fashion brands, like ZARA, got caught with the Forest Stewardship Council stamp on their tags and misled customers. The non-profit’s stamp on the tag referred to the recycled goods made to make the clothing tag – not the item itself. 

Additionally, Senator Newman notes that the average American discards 81 pounds of clothing a year – an amount that’s up 55% since the year 2000 on a per capita basis. 

Millero believes New York can take notes from California on moving forward with the Fashion Act. 

“What would be helpful in the industry is having some sort of standardized metric because a lot of this goes to the brands and the retailers of self-regulating,” said Millero. “If it’s kind of more of a state effort, then there could be some more streamlining of the process, common metrics and then both customers and brands could compare notes and see how they’re doing.”