Met Gala Glitz, Billions and No Style

Was the Met Gala held the day before yesterday in New York a Halloween costume party or a fashion celebration? Madonna in a black Saint Laurent dress with a ship on her head that looked like it came from Pirates of the Caribbean, Beyoncé in a sparkling skeleton-patterned dress covered in feathers by designer Olivier Rousteing, and Rihanna, who looked like a flower-shaped vase in a Margiela dress. The gala is the annual fundraising event for the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and under Anna Wintour’s management it has become one of the most important events in the fashion world. The gala is held every May around a different curatorial theme that defines the dress code, and guests, celebrities, designers and industry figures, are asked to come dressed in an interpretation of it. This year’s theme was “Fashion Is Art,” and the accompanying exhibition examines clothing as part of art history, but no inspiring fashion was there, and certainly not fashion that interprets art.

There was no statement either, only a rather superficial reading of works of art. Venus Williams wore a black Swarovski dress with a neckpiece, בדיוק like the painting by Robert Pruitt that served as her inspiration. Heidi Klum simply wanted to be a replica of a sculpture by Rafael Monti. Kendall Jenner wore a Zac Posen dress that mimicked the marble sculpture Nike of Samothrace displayed in the Louvre, and Kim Kardashian wore an orange plastic-looking outfit inspired by a work by British pop artist Allen Jones. The Costume Institute’s annual exhibition, which opens on the 10th of the month, is this year about the art of dress and examines fashion as a cultural, historical and aesthetic representation of the body, as part of art history. It presents about 200 items and accessories from the Met collection alongside a similar number of works of art, classical sculptures and paintings, in order to examine the dressed body as a cultural canvas through a dialogue between clothing and artworks. That dialogue did not really take place between the ambitious curatorial theme and the red carpet, and yet some stood out positively, including internet personality Emma Chamberlain in a dress by Thierry Mugler, which was a beautiful interpretation of Van Gogh’s painting “Gardens at Arles.” Actress Chase Infiniti in a Thom Browne dress inspired by the Venus de Milo, and supermodel Anok Yai wore a Balenciaga dress with makeup inspired by a crying bronze statue, creating a stunning interpretation of the crying Madonna sculpture.

Anna Wintour, the legendary editor of Vogue who stepped down from editing it in June last year, and who has for three decades set and managed the cultural tone of the fundraising gala, shared the hosting role this year with Beyoncé, Nicole Kidman and Venus Williams.

The new American oligarchy, Amazon founder billionaire Jeff Bezos and his wife, former journalist and presenter Lauren Sánchez Bezos, sponsored the gala, an honor previously reserved for major fashion houses in past years. Sánchez, who wore a Schiaparelli dress, a replica of John Singer Sargent’s painting “Madame X,” looked as if she had bought it at a cheap eveningwear boutique, once again proved that style is not a matter of a swollen bank account and cannot be bought with money. The critics’ voices grew louder ahead of the event. The protest group “Everyone Hates Elon,” which opposes tycoons such as Elon Musk and protests working conditions at Amazon, founded by Bezos, hung posters and notices around the city calling to boycott the gala because of Bezos and his wife’s involvement. A video of a 72-year-old Amazon worker speaking about the lack of rights for company employees was projected onto the walls of the building where the Bezoses’ luxury penthouse is located, and in the most extreme act, about 300 bottles filled with fake urine were scattered at the Metropolitan Museum, symbolizing how company drivers were forced to urinate in bottles so as not to stop working. A few hours before the gala, a “billionaire-free ball” was held in the city, where Amazon workers organized a grassroots fashion show on an improvised runway. According to many, the Met Gala is no longer the place where fashion meets art and has become a display of wealth by the “new American oligarchy.” The question is not who wore what, but who funds whom. This year more than ever, New York’s “party of the year” is emerging as a sophisticated financial mechanism. If in 1995, when Wintour began running the event, a ticket cost $1,000, by 2025 it had already risen to $75,000, and the price for a table started at $350,000. This year the prices climbed to $100,000 per ticket. It is not surprising that New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani and his wife announced several weeks ago that they would not attend the gala. Since the start of his term, the mayor has called for raising taxes on the wealthy and on large companies to help finance his social initiatives. The absence of prominent creators and fashion figures, including Zendaya, Tom Ford and Meryl Streep, is also a notable statement.

The Costume Institute has relied on the gala as a growing source of income since 1948. Over the past ten years, the gala has raised $166.5 million for the institute, and only in 2025 did revenue hit a record $31 million, compared with “only” $2.7 million raised at the New York City Ballet’s spring gala. Vanessa Friedman of The New York Times wondered whether the Costume Institute could survive without Met Gala donations, and what would happen when Anna Wintour, who turned the gala into a show of excessive extravagance, steps down?