The press conference for the Met Costume Institute’s spring exhibition is always a stately affair, but this year it was giving “feudal lady addresses her serfs” or perhaps “Marie Antoinette during the last days of Versailles.”
Here, among the spectacular marble sculptures of the art museum’s American wing, was a beaming Lauren Sanchez Bezos, who Anna Wintour introduced as a “force for joy,” before adding that “she and her husband, Jeff, have shown with this event that they genuinely, genuinely care about giving back.”
Meanwhile, in the outside world, protests against the Bezoses’ involvement had been raging for days. The discrepancy between the word on the street and the deference within the glass-ceilinged room was head-spinning.
Photo: AFP
ANTI-EXCESS PROTESTS
The Met Gala has recently become a magnet for anti-excess protests, but this was its most controversial yet, owing to the US$10 million patronage of its honorary co-chairs, centibillionaires Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez Bezos. It was not the first time Jeff Bezos bankrolled the gala — Amazon was its lead sponsor in 2012. But this year’s event came at a moment of soaring inequality, as Bezos’s personal wealth has mushroomed and his Donald Trump-appeasing decisions have made him less popular than ever with New York City’s left-leaning fashion and arts crowd.
In protest of the gala, the group Everyone Hates Elon projected interviews with disgruntled Amazon workers on to the side of Bezos’s Manhattan penthouse and circulated 300 containers of fake urine within the museum, to highlight Amazon drivers’ reports of having to work so relentlessly they must pee in bottles.
Some of the pushback came from fashion insiders themselves: former US Vogue editor Gabriella Karefa-Johnson co-hosted a rival Ball Without Billionaires, putting Amazon workers on the catwalk, and turned down work with a dream client to boycott the event.
“Fashion has always had a talent for laundering. In these moments, it wraps the most sinister individuals in silk, under the warm glow of flashing lights, and manages to convince us it’s culture. This is not new. But I have my limits,” Karefa-Johnson wrote on her Substack.
A further strand of criticism came from a very unlikely source: The Devil Wears Prada 2, a movie whose iconic editrix, Miranda Priestly, was inspired by Wintour herself. Released a few days before the gala, its spookily on-the-nose plot centered on tech baron Benji Barnes’s attempts to buy the depleted Runway magazine for his girlfriend, Emily.
While Barnes is a fictional character, he has certain Bezos-like qualities, including his post-divorce makeover (in the movie it is fueled by Sculptra, Ozempic and testosterone shots), and the storyline echoes unsubstantiated rumors that Bezos wants to buy Vogue for his wife.
Barnes delivers a chilling monologue about AI, anticipating a world where the magazine will publish without human involvement.
“The future just comes rushing at us like the lava of Pompeii,” he says, with a shrug, while Priestly — the villain of the first movie — heroically pushes back. She slams Emily’s efforts to muscle her way into Runway using her partner’s cash with the very Priestly burn: “You’re not a visionary, you’re a vendor.”
As the dust settled on the gala, the fashion insiders I spoke to expressed continued discomfort about the Bezos sponsorship, which they felt was disappointingly representative of the direction at Conde Nast, which recently closed its most progressive outlet, Teen Vogue.
They were disappointed too, that so many otherwise politically vocal celebrities attended the gala despite the outcry. (Those who glided down the red carpet included Anne Hathaway, Bad Bunny, Rihanna, Margot Robbie, Beyonce, Nicole Kidman and Venus Williams. Taraji P Henson and Mark Ruffalo were among the few to post anti-Amazon videos; media reports of boycotts from Meryl Streep and Zendaya were not confirmed.)
INSIDERS SPEAK OUT, SORT OF
But then, the insiders I spoke to themselves did not feel able to speak out. One creative in the fashion world told me that he had found the event “horrific” and “naff.”
“If it was up to me, it would be the end of the Met Gala,” he said, but he did not want to slam good friends — designers and stylists — who had worked on red carpet looks.
One of the reasons that tech billionaires are on trend is because so many luxury brands — the customary sponsors of exhibitions like the Met’s — are struggling. Last year, Burberry announced plans to cut 1,700 jobs while Kering, which owns Gucci, Saint Laurent and Balenciaga, closed 133 stores.
“It’s hard to watch: people who have been working for years in the industry that should be protected and have given so much of their creativity, are getting laid off, losing work,” the designer said. “And, at the moment, people like the Bezoses are the only ones funding this stuff.”
For all the backlash, Amy Odell, fashion journalist and author of the Back Row newsletter, doesn’t think the tech billionaires are going anywhere. She doesn’t buy the rumors of Bezos acquiring Vogue, but there are so many other reasons why he would want to be part of the fashion industry. Amazon has long sought to get closer to luxury fashion, facing sometimes haughty rebuffs (LVMH chief financial officer Jean-Jacques Guiony said in 2016 that “the business of Amazon does not fit with LVMH full stop”).
And there is the glamour, of course. Maybe the Bezoses are wooing fashion because “it’s fun for them,” Odell speculated.
“He’s having a midlife crisis, he’s getting some new clothes. His wife wants to be photographed and in the spotlight.”
In an oligarch attention economy, she theorized, “the tech people you can name” are becoming the Kardashians.
“They bring publicity. I think fashion is going to continue to embrace them. The question is whether they become normalized the way the Kardashians did.”
Whether because the gala has become so complex and incendiary, or because Wintour, 76, will one day retire, the Costume Institute does seem to be considering its next move. Its lead curator, Andrew Bolton, told the New York Times that by 2028 or 2030 the institute will have saved enough money in a “quasi endowment” that it will no longer need annual gala support.
“The Met Gala is extraordinary, but sometimes it dwarfs everything,” Bolton said, adding that the department’s reliance on it felt precarious.
“What if there was another global disaster, and people were like, ‘I can’t come to a party?’” Each year, he said, the gala has become bigger and more high profile, and “there will be a point where that’s not sustainable.”
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