Official co-chairs of Monday’s Met Gala include Beyoncé, Nicole Kidman, Venus Williams, and of course, Anna Wintour. However, the star-studded lineup was overshadowed by the event’s “honorary chairs,” a largely ceremonial title that has drawn significant attention this year. Instead of designers, actors, musicians or athletes, the roles went to billionaires Jeff Bezos and his wife Lauren Sanchez Bezos.
This isn’t the first time members of the tech elite have appeared at the Met Gala, with Bezos himself attending in 2012, 2019 and 2024. But the prominence of his participation this year sparked a wave of criticism, highlighting Silicon Valley’s increasingly influential role on fashion’s biggest night.
The growing relationship between the Met Gala and tech executives is “a new phenomenon in terms of the broader history of the gala, which has been really about fashion,” Deirdre Clemente, a fashion historian at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, told the Observer.
Founded in 1948 by publicist Eleanor Lambert, the Met Gala began as a fundraiser for the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute, and was attended primarily by New York City socialites. This was a far cry from today’s global scene. The turn toward celebrity accelerated in the 1970s under former Vogue editor-in-chief Diana Vreeland, and by the time Wintour took over in 1995, the event was on its way to becoming a cultural juggernaut. (Wintour recently resigned as editor-in-chief of US Vogue, but remains global managing editor.)
As the Met Gala’s profile has risen, so has the price of admission. Tickets — available only to Wintour-approved guests — cost $100,000, while table prices start at $350,000. As technology companies amass vast fortunes, they are increasingly stepping in to foot the bill for cultural cachet. It is said that buyers table this year Includes Amazon, OpenAI, Meta, and Snap.
“I call it”Technology party“Because a lot of technology has been involved over the last decade,” said Amy Odell, author of a 2022 biography of Wintour. Isaid the observer. “Over the years, the price of admission has become so high that it seems like who can afford it?”
Bezos, founder of Amazon, and Sanchez Bezos are also serving as major sponsors of this year’s event. But it was the announcement of their roles as honorary presidents last February that sparked the backlash. Despite Wintour’s defense of Sanchez Bezos as “A wonderful asset to the museum and event“In a recent CNN interview, the criticism continues to mount. An anti-billionaire activist group known as ‘Everybody Hates Elon’ She even filled New York City with posters Call for a boycott.
However, for some observers, the presence of ultra-rich figures represents a return to the party’s fundraising roots. “If you’re talking about fundraising, you’re inviting the people who have the most money,” Adrienne Jones, a fashion professor at the Pratt Institute, told the Observer. “Who else could be invited to be an honorary chair but one of the richest men on the planet?”
Silicon Valley’s growing presence at the Met Gala has been growing for years. Amazon sponsored the event in 2012, followed by Apple in 2016. TikTok supported the gala in 2022, the same year that OpenAI created an artificial intelligence installation for the Fashion Institute’s accompanying exhibition. The audience included not only Bezos, but also Elon Musk, Tim Cook and Sergey Brin.
In 2022, Wintour invited Sam Bankman Fried, the founder of FTX who was later convicted of fraud, to attend and possibly sponsor the event. He eventually called it off at the last minute, much to the frustration of Wintour’s team, according to Michael Lewis’ 2023 book. Going to infinity.
Despite the occasional controversy, tech companies remain eager to get involved. The six-figure fee “is a drop in the bucket for them,” O’Dell said. “What they get in return is much more valuable, which is to be seen as glamorous and cool and to get that kind of exposure to a large audience of women.”
However, this year’s backlash indicates a shift in public sentiment. Critics are responding not only to the technology’s presence, but to Bezos and Sanchez-Bezos being “front and center this time,” Jones said, also pointing to growing concerns about wealth inequality and the effects of artificial intelligence on employment.
Whether this backlash will change the Met Gala’s reliance on Silicon Valley remains uncertain. “They’ve opened the door for Silicon Valley to now be a part of this — and the money they bring with it,” Jones said.
