#gerardi

For the survivors walking — dressed by designers including Chloé, Diane von Furstenberg and Veronica Beard — the show represented a way to confront that question head on and upend the stigma associated with sexual assault.

“We’re taking back something that was taken away from us — our self-confidence,” said one of the participants, Jessica Long, a managing director at an investment firm in New York who, several years ago, was drugged and assaulted while on a work trip overseas. She also volunteers for Rise.

‘Flutter of Justice’

A few hours before the start of the fashion show, in a hotel suite in Midtown Manhattan, Ms. Nguyen floated around in a white Áo Dài — a traditional Vietnamese dress, and a nod to her heritage — that she would wear while walking down the runway that night. She raised her arms to showcase the outfit’s long, flowing sleeves.

Her outfit was covered in the text from the federal Survivors' Bill of Rights — legislation that was proposed by Ms. Nguyen in 2016 and, in a rare example of bipartisanship, sailed through both houses of Congress without a single dissenting vote. It was signed into law by President Barack Obama.

“You’ll look like a delicate flutter of justice,” a friend told her, as Ms. Nguyen practiced her walk.

The dress was a collaboration with the artists Suzanne McClelland and Alix Pearlstein as part of their recent series that places text onto garments. In 2019, they created a trench coat with all the questions that were asked to Christine Blasey Ford, who accused Justice Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault, in her Senate testimony. In 2020, the artists printed Anita Hill’s testimony against Justice Clarence Thomas onto a shirt dress.

As for the Survivors’ Bill of Rights, it was inspired by Ms. Nguyen’s own personal experience.

In 2013, in her final year at Harvard, she was raped in her dormitory. After getting a rape kit at the hospital — invasive exams that collect crucial evidence in assault cases — and speaking with legal advice groups, she learned two things: That rape trials often take years, even decades, with low conviction rates, and, unless a survivor presses charges, rape kits are often destroyed before they are even tested, though timelines vary by state.

In Massachusetts, where Ms. Nguyen was living at the time, rape kits were being destroyed within six months, even though the statute of limitations was 15 years. That meant that twice a year, Ms. Nguyen had to apply for an extension to keep her kit in the system, forcing her to relive the traumatic experience over and over.

“I just remember feeling so betrayed. Survivors are told to go to the police and go to the hospital to get a rape kit only to find out that the system is like a Kafkaesque game of ‘Saw,’” she said, referring to the horror movie franchise. “Why is the deck so stacked against survivors?”

Navigating the labyrinthine process spurred Ms. Nguyen to create her organization, Rise, and lobby lawmakers for better protections. The Survivors’ Bill of Rights mandates that rape kits are preserved for a state’s maximum statute of limitations, that victims are not charged a fee for getting rape kits and that victims can access results from the rape kit.

Since then, Rise has helped pass similar protections in 30 states and D.C., and, in 2018, Ms. Nguyen was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize for her activism.

Over the last two years, Ms. Nguyen has also been spearheading an effort for a global version of the Survivors’ Bill of Rights, in the form of a U.N. resolution that will be introduced by Sierra Leone at the General Assembly later this month.

Broadly, the resolution would urge world leaders to provide “access to justice for survivors of sexual violence,” said Ambassador Victoria Sulimani of Sierra Leone, who gave a speech at the fashion show on Friday and walked down the catwalk.

But the chances of getting enough votes to pass the resolution are slim, and like most General Assembly resolutions, it would likely be nonbinding with few enforcement mechanisms.

‘Multitudes’

In 2018, the Senate Judiciary Committee invited Ms. Nguyen back to Congress to provide testimony on “the implementation of the Survivors’ Bill of Rights” and to “explore additional ways to encourage more victims of sexual violence to come forward.”

The committee also invited Mr. Crews to share his experience of being assaulted by a top executive at the agency that previously represented him.

Mr. Crews and Ms. Nguyen stayed in touch after the testimony and became close friends — “she actually hangs with my daughters,” Mr. Crews noted — so when she asked him to walk in the show, he “jumped at the opportunity.”

“I want to give this issue all the publicity and attention that it needs,” he added.

Before the start of the show, Ms. Nguyen gave a speech. “Tonight is about us reclaiming our power,” she said. “We are multitudes.”

Six dancers crept into the room and performed a routine titled ‘You Are Safe,’ eventually stripping their costumes to reveal nude bodysuits covered in the words “attack,” “target,” “community” and “dignity.”

Backstage, Ms. Nguyen gave the more than a dozen celebrities, activists and survivors a pep talk.

“This was a mad dream,” she told them, “but now my favorite people in the world are here. Just have fun.”

Then they streamed out wearing graphic printed streetwear, patterned cocktail dresses, monochromatic suits and T-shirts.

Ms. Nguyen closed out the show. She walked down with her arms outstretched so the sleeves of her Áo Dài formed a kind of superhero cape behind her while Little Mix’s “Wings” played in the background.