Furious protests broke out on the streets of New York ahead of this year’s Met Gala, with demonstrators accusing the event’s billionaire sponsors, Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez Bezos, of using the fashion world to burnish an image tarnished by soaring inequality and labour exploitation. The activist group Everyone Hates Elon – a British collective – projected interviews with disgruntled Amazon workers on to the side of Bezos’s Manhattan penthouse and circulated 300 containers of fake urine inside the museum, drawing attention to reports that Amazon drivers are forced to work so relentlessly they must urinate in bottles. Posters across the city carried slogans such as “Boycott the Bezos Met Gala” and “Bezos Met Gala: Brought to you by the firm that powers ICE”. A rival “Ball Without Billionaires”, co-hosted by former US Vogue editor Gabriella Karefa-Johnson, put Amazon workers on the catwalk, while a “Resistance Red Carpet” protest unfolded nearby. The outcry marked the most controversial edition of an event that has become a magnet for anti-excess demonstrations.
A Gala of Extravagance and Contradiction
Inside the museum’s glass-ceilinged American wing, the atmosphere was stately and deferential. Anna Wintour, who stepped down as US Vogue editor in 2025 but continues to oversee the gala as Condé Nast’s global chief content officer, introduced Lauren Sánchez Bezos as a “force for joy”, adding that she and her husband Jeff “genuinely, genuinely care about giving back”. The press conference, one attendee observed, gave off a “feudal lady addresses her serfs” or “Marie Antoinette during the last days of Versailles” quality. The contrast with the fury outside was head-spinning.
The Bezoses served as honorary co-chairs and lead sponsors of the 2026 Met Gala, contributing $10 million – a sum that bankrolled the Costume Institute’s spring exhibition and the evening’s fundraising. The event raised $42 million, up from a record $26 million in 2024, according to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Individual tickets, which cost $35,000 in 2022, had risen to $75,000 in 2024 and hit $100,000 this year; a table for ten starts at $350,000. The guest list grew increasingly tech-oriented, including Google co-founder Sergey Brin, Mark Zuckerberg, and staff from OpenAI. Amazon itself was a lead sponsor as far back as 2012, but this year’s presence of centibillionaires came at a moment of soaring inequality. Bezos’s personal wealth has mushroomed, and his overtures to Donald Trump have made him less popular than ever with New York’s left-leaning fashion and arts crowd.
The frocks on the red carpet – worn by the likes of Anne Hathaway, Bad Bunny, Rihanna, Margot Robbie, Beyoncé, Nicole Kidman and Venus Williams – were as risky and creative as ever, reflecting the gala’s unique role as the only major annual red carpet where designers pursue their wildest instincts. But the lavishness of the spectacle felt increasingly out of step with the anger on the streets. A few celebrities, including Taraji P Henson and Mark Ruffalo, posted anti-Amazon videos; media reports that Meryl Streep and Zendaya had boycotted the event were not confirmed.
The Uneasy Alliance Between Fashion and Big Tech
Behind the glitter, a deep tension ran through the fashion industry. Many insiders expressed discomfort with the Bezos sponsorship, which they saw as emblematic of Condé Nast’s direction after the closure of its most progressive title, Teen Vogue. Karefa-Johnson, who turned down work with a dream client to boycott the gala, wrote on her Substack: “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.”
Yet few felt able to speak out publicly. One creative in the fashion world described the event as “horrific” and “naff”, but said he did not want to slam good friends – designers and stylists – who had worked on red carpet looks. An emerging designer whose work appeared in the Costume Institute’s spring exhibition told this journalist she was not aware of the Bezoses’ involvement until long after she started working on the show. She felt deeply conflicted, concerned she was being tokenised “because we know that the Jeff Bezoses of this world don’t care what broke people have to say”. Ultimately she decided she could not turn down the exposure. “It’s so hard to try to fight it before you have any power to make change.”
The economic pressures driving this uneasy alliance are acute. Luxury brands are struggling: Burberry announced plans to cut 1,700 jobs last year, 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.”
The Bezoses’ campaign for fashion kudos has been extensive, much of it facilitated by US Vogue. The magazine ran a glowing profile of Sánchez Bezos in 2023 and doubled down with a digital wedding cover in 2025. The couple has sat front row at Paris fashion week shows and announced donations of tens of millions of dollars in grants and scholarships for sustainable fabrics – part of a broader $34 million commitment from the Bezos Earth Fund to accelerate eco-friendly textiles, including biodegradable fibres and plastic-free synthetic silks. The sustainable fashion market is projected to more than double by 2032, as the industry grapples with an environmental footprint where materials account for nearly 80% of its impact. But critics see the philanthropy as image laundering: any suggestion that Bezos, Brin and Zuckerberg attended the Met Gala because they care about the preservation of archival garments, one observer noted, “feels slightly ridiculous”.
Anna Wintour, who has a history of bringing culturally and commercially potent figures into the fold – Kim Kardashian being a prime example – defended Sánchez Bezos as a “wonderful asset”. But many top designers, including “image architect” Law Roach and Schiaparelli, who dressed Sánchez Bezos for the gala in her preferred cleavage-centric, hourglass aesthetic, conspicuously refrained from posting images of their work on Instagram. The industry usually falls in line with Wintour’s judgement, but this time the reluctance was telling.
The cultural backlash was amplified by the release of The Devil Wears Prada 2 days before the gala. Its plot centres on a tech baron, Benji Barnes, who attempts to buy the depleted Runway magazine for his girlfriend, Emily. Barnes has Bezos-like qualities – a post-divorce makeover fuelled by Sculptra, Ozempic and testosterone shots – and delivers a chilling monologue about AI, anticipating a future where magazines publish without human involvement. The villain of the first film, Miranda Priestly, heroically pushes back, slamming Emily’s attempt to buy her way in with the line: “You’re not a visionary, you’re a vendor.” Screenwriter Aline Brosh McKenna says the plot’s similarity to real-world rumours – that Bezos wants to buy Vogue for his wife – is a coincidence. But the casting of a rapacious Silicon Valley oligarch as the fashion world’s antagonist reflects a zeitgeist that has made the relationship between the two industries increasingly fraught.
Fashion journalist Amy Odell, author of the Back Row newsletter, does not believe the tech billionaires are going anywhere. She dismisses the rumours of Bezos acquiring Vogue, but notes that Amazon has long sought to get closer to luxury fashion – facing haughty rebuffs, such as LVMH chief financial officer Jean-Jacques Guiony’s 2016 comment that “the business of Amazon does not fit with LVMH full stop”. Odell speculates that the Bezoses are wooing fashion because “it’s fun for them. He’s having a midlife crisis, he’s getting some new clothes. His wife wants to be photographed and in the spotlight.” In what she calls an “oligarch attention economy”, the tech billionaires are becoming the new Kardashians – and fashion is likely to embrace them. Sánchez Bezos, she notes, is a “VIC” (very important client), part of the 2% of luxury buyers who account for 40% of sales. Condé Nast would view Bezos as an ally, not only for Met Gala donations but also for deals such as a recent agreement allowing Amazon to pull content from Condé publications for AI-generated podcasts.
Condé Nast’s CEO, Roger Lynch, said in a post-gala podcast interview that this year’s controversy was “good … the intrigue around this event just seems to grow!” Odell suggested that perhaps “they count on the internet’s memory being short. Perhaps they just don’t care, because they don’t talk to normal people.”
Yet the Costume Institute itself appears to be considering its next move. 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” to no longer need annual gala support. “The Met Gala is extraordinary, but sometimes it dwarfs everything,” he 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”.
If the top of the industry cannot hear the outcry from the little people, it is easy to imagine the gala – and the luxury industry it represents – spinning ever further into oligarch territory, with tech barons playing all the starring roles. At which point, the creatives whose ideas and elan have always driven fashion forward may not want to cheer them on. They may want to eat them.
