Protesters from the United Students Against Sweatshops at the Fashion Show for the Adidas' Neo label. ((Kacy Capobres))
Anti-sweatshop protesters gave Selena Gomez a cold welcome Wednesday night, as she made her entrance to a New York Fashion Week show.
They were giving away fliers and chanting "BAD-IDAS" outside the venue in the heart of Manhattan.
The 20-year-old starlet was there on behalf of the Adidas NEO label, to which she was recently named style ambassador, to support the teen bloggers who ran the runway with stylish outfits and seasonal trends.
Outside, a girl dressed in fake Adidas gear distributed anti-sweatshop fliers to the flowing crowd. The fliers showed children from Indonesia and read “Selena Gomez: Be an ambassador for children, not for sweatshops.”
“We managed to win tickets to this event, so we planned to try to get the message out," said Claire Lewis, a student at Northeastern University and member of The United Students Against Sweatshops group, to Fox News Latino. “Adidas wasn’t super happy with that.”
We’re not trying to bad-mouth Selena Gomez.
Lewis added that the group has tried numerous times to contact Gomez’s publicist but have been unsuccessful.
“It’s a code of conduct violation,” Lewis said. “We’re not trying to bad-mouth Selena Gomez at all. We think she would care about this issue if she knew about it. We decided to come here to where we knew she would be.”
Along with the protesters were a husband and wife who worked in an Adidas factory in Indonesia for over 22 years. They said the factory shut down two years ago and Adidas has refused to pay their severance.
In the U.S. Adidas has contracts in place with hundreds of universities. So far the group’s efforts have successfully convinced six of them to cut their ties with the brand over this issue.
Despite the chaos, Gomez seemed pleased with her debut show with the brand, later tweeting happily about it.
“Amazing show for @adidasNEOLabel tonight!!" she wrote. "They looked amazing."
Gomez’s people did not immediately respond to Fox News Latino for comment.
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