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The annual Met Gala, which takes place this year on Monday, May 4, is always a lightning rod for controversy. Was Karl Lagerfeld too problematic to serve as a 2023 theme? Was TikTok, which had just been deemed a national security threat by the US government, an appropriate sponsor for 2024\u2019s gala? And just how small can designers make Kim Kardashian\u2019s waist? (This one comes up almost yearly.)<\/p>\n
But the 2026 gala, celebrating the accompanying exhibition, \u201cCostume Art,\u201d that gathers examples of clothed bodies from across the Metropolitan Museum of Art\u2019s curatorial departments, has proven especially contentious.<\/p>\n
Elected amid growing public anxiety over income inequality, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced he will skip the A-list gathering. \u201cMy focus is also on affordability and making the most expensive city in the United States affordable, and that\u2019s what I\u2019m looking to spend a lot of my time focused on,\u201d he told news site Hell Gate last month.<\/p>\n
Then there is the matter of the evening\u2019s sponsors. While fashion brands or tech behemoths like Instagram typically underwrite the affair, this year Amazon co-founder and executive chair, Jeff Bezos, and his wife, Lauren S\u00e1nchez Bezos, are the event\u2019s main benefactors. They are also honorary chairs. (Co-chairs Beyonc\u00e9, Nicole Kidman, Venus Williams and Vogue\u2019s Anna Wintour remain the official hosts, while Saint Laurent is sponsoring the exhibition catalog.)<\/p>\n\n\nA guest’s Karl Lagerfeld-themed cape is unfurled at the 2023 Met Gala. Lagerfeld, known for his Chanel designs and acerbic judgments, was the center of that year’s exhibition. – Neilson Barnard\/Getty Images<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
After the Met announced the Bezoses\u2019 participation, many social media users \u2014 who are the Met Gala\u2019s most enthusiastic promoters, tuning into Vogue\u2019s livestream and analyzing looks for days afterwards \u2014 called for a boycott. This has materialized as actual protests from groups including Everyone Hates Elon (as in Musk), which over the past few weeks has papered New York City with posters also urging a boycott. \u201cThe Bezos Met Gala: Brought to you by worker exploitation,\u201d reads one, in reference to the allegations of labor violations that have long swirled around Amazon\u2019s e-commerce business.<\/p>\n
The recurring criticism has not stopped the gala from raising enormous funds: last year, it brought in a record $31 million. (By contrast, the New York Philharmonic\u2019s Opening Gala raised $3.3 million in 2025.)<\/p>\n
Max Hollein, the museum\u2019s director and chief executive officer, said he saw the Met Gala as part of \u201cthe history of American philanthropy,\u201d where people across the political spectrum support culture and other causes. \u201cRight now, maybe there\u2019s an added layer of scrutiny, an added layer of attention to that,\u201d he said. \u201cBut we will always be grateful for that support from various different sources.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\nAlexandria Ocasio-Cortez, left, and designer Aurora James at the Met Gala in 2021. Ocasio-Cortez’s dress, by James, reads “TAX THE RICH.” – Mike Coppola\/Getty Images<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\nCaroline Kennedy and Jack Schlossberg at the 2017 Met Gala. – George Pimentel\/WireImage\/Getty Images<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
The Met Gala is the primary fundraiser for the Met\u2019s Costume Institute, which houses over 33,000 objects spanning seven centuries. (It is oft-repeated that the Costume Institute is the only museum department that raises its own funds, although that is not accurate; every department receives money from the museum\u2019s overall operational budget, and supplements that with fundraising.)<\/p>\n
The gala\u2019s funds support acquisitions of garments and accessories, but also the institute\u2019s reference library, which holds over 800 periodicals and 1,500 designer files pertaining to the history of fashion and clothing, dating back to the sixteenth century. The funds also support a conservation lab and storage space, as well as the Costume Institute\u2019s gallery spaces, including the 4,300-square-foot Anna Wintour Costume Center and the brand-new nearly 12,000-square-foot Cond\u00e9 M. Nast Galleries. Salaries for its 29-person staff also come from gala funds. The new galleries, located just off the museum\u2019s Great Hall, will allow the Costume Institute\u2019s exhibitions to remain open for much longer, increasing the reach and scope of the department\u2019s shows.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is one of the greatest collections of fashion, of costumes,\u201d Hollein said. Preservation and storage are \u201cmore challenging, more expensive\u201d than for drawings or paintings, he said. \u201cI think it\u2019s really important for people to understand, when we talk about the Met Gala, the money really goes into preserving this collection.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\nOne of the exhibition rooms for 2024’s “Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion.” – Jeenah Moon\/Reuters<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
It is the presence of bold-faced names and the sheer amounts of money surrounding the event that seem to court the most controversy. Over the past two decades, Wintour has helped transform the party from an archetypal charity benefit into a celebrity-fueled phenomenon \u2014 an effort that has led to bigger and bigger ambitions for the museum, alongside ever-increasing ticket prices for gala attendees. Individual tickets are priced at $100,000 for 2026, while a table sells for $350,000, and guests must be invited by the museum to buy tickets.<\/p>\n
The perception that the event is tone-deaf means that critics are eager to pounce and cry hypocrisy when, say, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wears a dress that reads \u201cTax the Rich\u201d (as she did in 2021). Last year, Kennedy heir (and former Met Gala attendee) Jack Schlossberg, who is now mounting a congressional campaign in Manhattan, called for a boycott of the event in an Instagram post, citing \u201cso much happening around the world and at home.\u201d (The post has since been deleted.)<\/p>\n\n\n“Boycott the Bezos Met Gala” posters have appeared across New York City leading up to the gala on the first Monday in May. – Angela Weiss\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
For most, it is not the museum that warrants criticism, but the involvement of the Bezoses. On the morning of the gala, a group of organizations including the Service Employees International Union, the Strategic Organizing Center and the Amazon Labor Union will stage a Ball Without Billionaires, a fashion show in downtown New York in which workers from businesses including Amazon, Whole Foods and The Washington Post (all linked to Bezos) as well as Starbucks and Uber will serve as models, wearing clothes by ethically-minded designers.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf there is that money to sponsor this gala, there should also be money to pay the workers fairly,\u201d said Cindy Castro, a New York-based designer who immigrated to the US from Ecuador, and whose pieces will appear at Monday\u2019s event.<\/p>\n
\u201cI want to raise awareness about our safety issues that we\u2019re having in the Amazon warehouses,\u201d said April Watson, an employee at an Amazon Warehouse in northeast Georgia who will model in Monday\u2019s show. She said that she and her fellow workers are pressured to pick and pack at faster and faster rates, receiving warnings that can lead to termination when their pace falls in the bottom 5%. \u201cWhen I try to work fast with very heavy items, it\u2019s easy for me to do too much, and it has led me to be injured.\u201d<\/p>\n
She continued, \u201cI want to do what I can to help there be systemic change that would make the warehouse safer for employees like myself.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\nIn 2012, Amazon sponsored the Met Gala and Jeff Bezos served as honorary chair. He posed at that year’s gala alongside Anna Wintour, Miuccia Prada and Carey Mulligan. (Photo by Steve Eichner\/WWD\/Penske Media via Getty Images) – Steve Eichner\/WWD\/Getty Images<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
In a statement to CNN, an Amazon spokesperson said of their warehouse worker expectations, \u201cSafety is our top priority and at the core of everything we do. Amazon does not have fixed quotas at our facilities. Instead, we assess performance based on safe and achievable expectations and take into account time and tenure, peer performance, and adherence to safe work practices.\u201d<\/p>\n
This is not Bezos\u2019s first time as the Met Gala\u2019s honorary chair. In 2012, Amazon sponsored the gala and the tech titan held the honorific, posing with the likes of Wintour, Miuccia Prada and Carey Mulligan.<\/p>\n
While Watson was not working at Amazon then (she joined the company in 2021), she said, \u201cMy perception of him was different.\u201d<\/p>\n
Back then, Bezos was worth an estimated $18.4 billion, according to Forbes, which made him the 26th richest person in the world. Now, he\u2019s worth an estimated $224 billion, and ranks fourth.<\/p>\n
These days, Watson said, \u201cJeff Bezos seems almost like royalty. He is so wealthy, and I know that he is the one that started Amazon \u2013 he\u2019s very creative, and he\u2019s a good organizer. He built it. And now I feel like he\u2019s celebrating his success and just not interested in us who are at this bottom tier.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Bezoses\u2019 recent high-profile outings \u2014 including a splashy wedding in Venice and a series of appearances at Paris Couture Week in January \u2014 have also made the gap between their lifestyle and that of most others more apparent. That has made them a more visible target, too.<\/p>\n
And yet, without their support, this year\u2019s Met Gala \u2014 and its promotion of fashion as an art form, and of the notion that celebrities can craft a narrative through clothing that entertains us or even helps us better understand our world \u2014 may have been more modest in scale.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat is important is that you need to evaluate the integrity of the institution, the profoundness of our program, and the proper use that is being applied for these funds,\u201d said Hollein.<\/p>\n\n\nJeff Bezos and Lauren S\u00e1nchez Bezos arrive at Schiaparelli during Paris Couture Week in January. – Neil Mockford\/GC Images\/Getty Images<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
What the Bezoses are providing funds for, he said, are the museum and Costume Institute\u2019s ethos and initiatives, not a donor\u2019s personal agenda. \u201cThis is not a show on Amazon. This is not a show on Lauren S\u00e1nchez\u2019s dresses. One needs to be really clear that what our donors are supporting is the program of the Met, and the ideas of our curators, and the integrity of the institution,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd they don\u2019t want to have it any other way. That\u2019s exactly the donors that we want, and those are the donors that museums like ours need to have.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wintour told CNN in late 2025 that S\u00e1nchez Bezos would be \u201ca wonderful asset to the museum and the event,\u201d calling her a \u201cgreat lover of costume and obviously of fashion.\u201d<\/p>\n
Indeed, it is because of the Costume Institute and Met Gala that so many see fashion as they do today. Hollstein pointed to last year\u2019s show on Black dandyism, for example, or this year\u2019s, which will highlight \u201cnot only the dialogue between different arts about the dressed body, but different body types.\u201d<\/p>\n
A museum, after all, is not a donors\u2019 playground, but a place for the world to access art.<\/p>\n
\u201cI always wanted to see the Met museum. I love art,\u201d Watson said. \u201cMuseums in general allow ordinary people \u2014 anyone \u2014 to come in and see, face to face, these priceless pieces of art.\u201d<\/p>\n
For more CNN news and newsletters create an account at CNN.com<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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