Sarah Ziff

Show-goers looking to attend Nautica's spring 2014 runway show at Lincoln Center yesterday were greeted by more than just the normal crowd of photogs and well-dressed editors: A coalition made up of fashion models, U.S. labor rights organizations, and Kalpona Akter, a leading Bangladeshi labor rights advocate, were on hand to protest the brand for failing to sign the Bangladesh Accord on Fire and Building Safety.

The modeling industry is largely unregulated: Models are independent contractors without basic employment rights like workplace protection and minimum age and wage requirements. That's why the Model Alliance, established to improve models' working conditions as well as provide a safe space for models to communicate with one another about their rights, created one of the first surveys we've seen to offer an analysis of models' experiences. "When Sara [Ziff, the founder of the Model Alliance] and I were just starting to think about ways we could organize models, and how we might go about working for fairer labor standards in the industry, we realized we first needed to know how models viewed their working conditions, and where models themselves saw room for improvement," Jenna Sauers, who sits on the board of the Model Alliance, said. "We did the survey because we wanted a map, basically." Granted, the sample size is pretty small (the Alliance sent an anonymous online survey to 241 working models, and only 85 responded) but still, it offers a little window into what life is like as a working model. Some of the results aren't that surprising (most models begin working at age 13-19, most of them have been told to lose weight by their agencies), but others are downright horrifying.

Last night loads of leggy models--A-listers like Shalom Harlow, Doutzen Kroes, Coco Rocha and Crystal Renn among them--gathered at the Standard in the Meatpacking to sip free vodka drinks over loud music. At first glance, a typical fashion party. Only it wasn't. These models were gathered to celebrate the launch of the Model Alliance, a non-profit organization founded by Sara Ziff dedicated to "helping models in the American fashion industry organize for safe, fair, and healthy standards in their workplace."