In the past, the industry has engaged with politics primarily with a message to register to vote—a somewhat tepid initiative that waves a bipartisan white flag in order to not alienate potential consumers. This season, despite the fact that it’s a midterm election year, saw the majority of the industry avoid any political discourse, with few exceptions. Hillary Taymour of Collina Strada, Henry Zankov, Christian Cowan, Patricio Campillo, Rachel Scott of Diotima and Proenza Schouler, and Rio Uribe are among the designers who wore the pins at their runway shows. Scott and Uribe also addressed the political landscape both as part of their collections and while speaking with reporters. “If you have a platform of any form, you need to be saying something about what’s happening,” Scott said after her Diotima show on Sunday, “especially in fashion, which operates in the realm of culture.”
These pins are, by design, “an entry point into other things,” says Jess Morales Rocketto, the director of Maremoto, an organization and fund dedicated to amplifying Latino storytelling, who created the pins with her friend and co-organizer Nelini Stamp, director of strategy at Working Families Power.
The campaign itself came together immediately following the Good’s killing in January. “It was the week or a few days after Renée Good was murdered by ICE, and the video was kind of everywhere,” says Stamp who, together with Morales Rocketto, plus partners at the ACLU and the National Domestic Workers’ Alliance, got to work, quickly. “The Golden Globes were happening and we thought we could get a pin on the carpet as a symbol of solidarity,” she says. Once the pins were created, they deployed an assortment of Hollywood contacts—agents, celebrities, and more—to bring them into the Golden Globes. “People had pins in their purses to give out. It was grassroots,” Morales Rocketto says.
It’s how Ariana Grande ended up wearing a pin at the ceremony, which was handed to her by Mark Ruffalo. “After the earned media response was, I would say a little surprising to us, “we knew we were onto something, “ Morales Rocketto says.
Later in the month, Hollywood descended into Utah for the Sundance Film Festival and the “ICE Out” pins made their way to the likes of Natalie Portman, Olivia Wilde, Zoey Deutsch. “The interest was crazy,” says Morales Rocketto. And then came the Grammys.
“That was the tipping point because politics were all people were talking about,” Morales Rocketto says. Billie Eilish, Finneas O’Connell, Carole King, Joni Mitchell and other attendees donned the pins as winners including Bad Bunny and Olivia Dean spoke about immigration during their acceptance speeches onstage. The next step was to reach beyond Hollywood. Enter: New York Fashion Week.
