Fashion

Why the Met Gala is tarnished

By
A collage of celebrities at an event with a red carpet, probably the Met Gala. On the left, Zendaya is in a completely white suit with a matching hat. In the middle, Anna Wintour is in a black lace coat, a striking necklace, and her signature sunglasses. On the right, Lauren Sánchez and Jeff Bezos are arm in arm; she is wearing a white strapless dress and he a classic black tuxedo. In the background, photographers and floral arrangements are visible.
The fundraiser of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute in New York is perhaps the fashion event of the year. The evening when celebs dress up to the max with the most extravagant looks. Or even turn it into a performance piece, like Lady Gaga did for sixteen minutes once. And tonight it’s happening again. Yet many people are looking forward to it less than usual this year. That’s not due to the Costume Art theme, but to tech bros.
Wife of Jeff Bezos

The Devil Wears Amazon

We see Amazon boss Jeff Bezos everywhere these days. When he’s not hanging out with madonna performance stage laughing in the White House, he’s renting out all of Venice for his wedding to Lauren Sánchez. And now the couple is also appearing at the Met Gala as sponsors. With a donation of at least ten million dollars (!), they are immediately named honorary co-chairs. Other co-chairs this year are Anna Wintour (obviously), Nicole Kidman and Venus Williams. Also Beyoncé makes her comeback at the event as co-chair after ten years. But back to those sponsors. Former editor-in-chief of Vogue, Anna Wintour, said last year to CNN that Sánchez is “a great asset” to the museum and the gala, and called her “a big lover of costumes and fashion.” She was especially grateful for her “incredible generosity,” but not everyone shares that enthusiasm. After all, Amazon is a giant corporation that reportedly has ties to ICE and is not exactly known for its employee-friendliness. For instance, Amazon delivery drivers hardly get bathroom breaks. Activist groups are therefore calling for a boycott of the Met Gala, among other things through a poster campaign. The posters feature texts like: “Brought to you by the firm that powers ICE.” In another image, there’s a bottle of urine on the red carpet. And it doesn’t stop there; according to those same activists, there are even hundreds of bottles filled with yellow liquid hidden at the location.

AI in a new guise

The two controversial figures have recently been sitting front row at shows of major fashion houses and appeared in Vogue. This sudden love for fashion doesn’t come out of nowhere; it’s part of a larger plan: making AI more appealing to women. Artificial intelligence has long been primarily a male-dominated field, and the fear is growing that women are being left behind. So: rebrand. They have been working on it for a while, as Mira Murati was present at the Met Gala two years ago in her role as CTO of OpenAI. There was also a chatbot that allowed museum visitors to ‘talk’ with a socialite from the 1930s. You can now see that rebrand more clearly than ever: companies like OpenAI, Meta, and Snap Inc. are now buying tables for celebs. Because that’s how it works at the Met Gala: you don’t just take a number and walk up that wide staircase. No, tickets cost a fortune, and celebs don’t pay that amount themselves. Big brands buy tables that can seat about ten guests. And there’s something in return: you wear the brand that invites you. You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours. Where fashion houses like Gucci sponsoring this spectacle (2003), you now increasingly see tech and AI companies taking over that role. People have long associated AI with the death of culture, and now it is also being blamed for the decline of the Met Gala. The focus seems to be shifting further: from fashion to status. And if there is one thing true fashion lovers are allergic to, it is that.

Controversy as dress code

But the Met Gala is no stranger to controversy; for instance, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in 2021 in a white dress with “Tax the Rich” in red cow letters on the back. And for years similar criticism has been heard: how dystopian is it to spend millions on dresses and tables while children are being bombed elsewhere? It is also why Zohran Mamdani, the mayor of NYC, chooses not to show up tonight. According to The New York Times , the museum could manage just fine without this fundraiser in a few years. In other words: financially, the gala is becoming unnecessary, and therefore harder to justify.

Whether we Zendaya will ever see those stairs walked again, time will tell, as she is also absent tonight. Her take on the theme could have been one for the history books, but unfortunately. Instead, the attention shifts back to the usual suspects. All eyes on the Bezos’. What will Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez wear? Custom-made Amazon?

SOURCE: 7NEWS