Taxi Strike Could Cramp Fashion Week's Style

A taxi strike planned for next week could create transportation havoc during New York's Fashion Week, which starts the same day that 10,000 drivers are threatening to walk off the job. A planned two-day strike, slated to start September 5, would affect transportation options for the tens of thousands expected to flood into Manhattan to attend fashion-related events. Fashion Week's notoriously cramped schedules and fast pace, many in the fashion industry say, mean any type of delay can decrease attendance because clothing buyers and fashion editors typically shuttle between numerous shows.

"I think it will be absolutely crazy," a designer, Anait Bian, said. "Even a simple rain usually affects Fashion Week, to tell you the truth. You get half the editors not showing up to the show."

The producer of Fashion Week, IMG Fashion, estimates 100,000 people will attend the events, which run through September 12. Magazine editors, stylists, models, and representatives from clothing and department stores fill the streets en masse for the week, as designers debut their spring clothing lines at more than 75 shows, the bulk of which are held in or around Bryant Park.

A taxi shortage could be felt especially by workers in the shows, who often need to quickly travel from one show to another while lugging along hair dryers, grooming products, cosmetics, and other accessories that would make a subway ride inconvenient.

"You've got all your equipment — you try and get in as many shows during the day as you possibly can," the owner of OC61 Salon, Louise O'Connor, a stylist at numerous Fashion Week shows, said. "A show lasts about 20 minutes and then you're on to the next show, so you need to get from Point A to Point B quickly." Many in the taxi industry are protesting a mandate that taxicabs carry a package of new technology that includes global positioning systems that can track cabs. The group organizing the threatened strike, the Taxi Workers Alliance, insists the simultaneous timing with Fashion Week was an unplanned coincidence, though not an unwelcome one. "I urge the fashion industry to besiege City Hall with irate phone calls," a spokesman for the group, William Lindauer, said.

The timing was based primarily on the expected uptick in citywide activity after the Labor Day holiday, Mr. Lindauer said, noting that the traditionally vacation-filled days of August did not seem like an opportune time for a strike.

"When everyone's in town, rather than when everyone's out of town, you can have the most impact," he said.

The Taxi Workers Alliance represents about one-fourth of the 44,000 licensed taxi drivers in the city. The two other major taxi driver organizations have said they have no plans to strike.

Should the drivers strike as Fashion Week begins, livery cabs are anticipating a surge in business on top of the traditional increase seen during the confab.

"Even if there is no strike, Fashion Week could increase business," the owner of Morning Star Limousine, Memis Yetim, said. "If there is a strike, then forget it."