A-list stylist Ilaria Urbinati had a hectic summer and fall on the horizon.
With a client roster that includes Chris Evans, Bradley Cooper, Ryan Reynolds, Dwyane Johnson, Ben Affleck and Rami Malek, Urbinati was busy prepping looks for both the Toronto and Venice film festivals, the Emmy Awards and a slew of late night talk shows. But on July 14, when actors union SAG-AFTRA voted to join the Writers Guild of America on strike over their labor contracts with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, Urbinati’s work evaporated overnight.
“Press appearances, red carpets, awards shows and film festivals are our bread and butter and that has completely ceased. It’s a little shocking,” explains Urbinati, a veteran of the fashion industry and alum of The Hollywood Reporter’s Most Powerful Stylists list.
Per SAG rules, actors are not allowed to promote struck work while on strike, which means bowing out of premieres, film festivals, FYC events and awards shows. The majority of red carpets have been scrapped — though some charity and fashion events have carried on, largely with influencers in attendance — leaving stylists, event planners and other red-carpet-reliant industries in a very familiar place to where they were three years ago amid the pandemic: short on work, with no firm end date.
“Unlike COVID, we do have non-SAG clients doing non-SAG things, and I have other projects I’m working on that are unrelated to styling, such as some brand deals, design collabs and writing projects,” she adds. “But we definitely haven’t been this slow since the pandemic and it does take a large toll.” In comparing this time to 2020, Urbinati says that uncertainty was far more scary, but there was at least government relief: “The strike coming so close behind the pandemic just means that a lot of people are no longer in a position to not work. For a lot of people, that rainy day fund dried up during the pandemic.”
Stylist Elizabeth Stewart, whose clients include Cate Blanchett, Julia Roberts, Viola Davis, Jessica Chastain, Gal Gadot and Amanda Seyfried, says she’s also mostly not working during this time, beyond preparing “just in case” looks for Venice and Toronto. But, she sees the sacrifice as worth the end result.
“It’s a pivotal moment for our industry and extremely important that my clients take part. It’s about taking care of all actors — my clients obviously do well, but the average SAG actor doesn’t even make enough to qualify for health insurance,” Stewart says. “Knowing how much all the CEOs make, and that the rank and file can barely scrape by, makes this a critical all-for-one and one-for-all moment.”
Witnessing the reckoning that is happening on the picket lines in regard to wages, health insurance and other labor issues has served as yet another reminder of the challenges that stylists face as they operate without a union, Stewart explains.
“A lot of stylists and hair and makeup artists are thinking seriously about our futures in the industry. We completely support the actors and writers. But ironically, we have no union protection ourselves, with not even an option for health insurance unless we provide it for ourselves. We make most of our living not from studio rates, which have gotten lower and lower — especially when they ask us to cover our own expenses — but from fashion brand endorsements,” says Stewart, also a veteran THR Power Stylists honoree. “This means people like me, who have clients with endorsements, can do well enough but people just starting out, or with a different type of clientele, can barely scrape by, just like your average actors and writers.” (Case in point, Local 706, the makeup artists and hair stylists guild, is hosting Hair and Makeup-A-Thon to raise funds for its workers being impacted by the strike.)
On the event planner side, things have been just as uncertain, at a time that’s usually packed with Emmy For Your Consideration gatherings and big summer movie premieres.
Shannon Warner, who puts on dozens of events for Disney and HBO each year with a particular focus on FYC screenings, says in the weeks leading up to the SAG strike there were lots of questions of, “If the strike happens, what do we do? Do we do it without talent? Do we do it at all?” A few events have carried on with just the director or other non-writing crew in attendance, but most have opted to scrap carpets altogether.
“It’s very much like we’re tiptoeing around what is right and what is not,” Warner explains. “We tried to get creative with the craftspeople, that was going to be something that we were going to do, but I think that everybody’s trying to be respectful and just kind of stay away from that. Optically, it doesn’t look good for us to be entertaining right now. I think everybody wants to stay united.”
In the meantime, she’s pivoted to doing more mailers and press box deliveries, to still offer some sort of promotion for upcoming projects, as well as leaning into corporate events and executive off-sites. There’s also been plenty of pandemic PTSD, she says, noting that the pandemic taught the industry about the need for kill fees in their contracts, so that vendors could salvage some of their costs.
“I think that we all went back to the March 13 day of ‘wait a minute, now what?’ A lot of people lost a lot of money because there was no clause, so I think people are putting clauses in there, force majeure,” she adds as events are tentatively being planned over the next few months — those that she hopes can happen immediately when the strikes end, so “we can pick up right where we left off instead of taking a slow move into it. I hope that we can get some good events in here before the end of the year.”
Event planner Gina Wade says that she’s doing walkthroughs and putting dates on hold as “we’re all working like these things are going to happen. The dates might pivot, the timing might shift but we can’t just stand here and wait around. We all kind of have to keep the train moving because if we find out next week that the strike is over, we can’t go back in time and make up for that lost time.”
That includes booking vendors like Red Carpet Systems, who provide that signature red walkway; CEO Toni Kilicoglu says the current situation is “like deja vu,” with the entertainment industry representing 80 percent of his clients. He’s currently relying on corporate events and trade shows to get by, and notes “catering companies, florists, DJs, valet services: everybody’s in the same boat.” After experiencing the post-pandemic events boom, though, he’s feeling more optimistic this time, hoping that “they’re gonna get back on their feet and they’re gonna book many, many premieres, and everybody will be happy with that. I see the light at the end of the tunnel that we will come back strong and get everything that we lost.”
Wade herself says she’s bracing for a fourth quarter surge as Hollywood makes up for lost time, even though there’s currently no end in sight.
“With COVID, we had absolutely no idea when that was going to end, that went on for years. I don’t think anybody is under the impression that the strikes will go on for that period of time, so I think that there is a light at the end of the tunnel,” she continues. “Our hope is that everybody will come to the table and figure out a deal that works for all parties involved, and then our plan I think as an industry is to pick up right where we left off and hit the ground running.”
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August 03, 2023 at 10:00PM
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For Stylists and Event Planners, Hollywood’s Dual Strike Brings Pandemic Deja Vu - Hollywood Reporter
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