The Met Gala is scrambling to do damage control amid questions about its billionaire sponsors.
The event, formally known as the Costume Institute Benefit, is an annual homage to fashion, art, and celebrity. This year, Amazon’s billionaire leader, Jeff Bezos, and his wife, Lauren Sánchez Bezos, are serving as honorary chairs and official sponsors.
The Bezos’ involvement in the gala has sparked widespread discourse and backlash. Speculation heightened since A-list actresses Zendaya and Meryl Streep declined invitations to the event.
Streep’s representatives told Page Six that the Devil Wears Prada actress has never chosen to make an appearance: “Meryl has been invited to the Met Gala for many years but has never attended. While she appreciates Vogue, Anna, and her incredible imagination and stamina, it has never quite been her scene.”
Meanwhile, Zendaya’s longtime stylist, Law Roach, said this year’s event will be the first time in his career when it’s all about him, and not his Spider-Man client.
Nonetheless, rumors persist that the event’s sponsors played a role in the snubs. The controversy has been bolstered with protests centered around Amazon’s labor violations and calls to boycott the Bezos-backed event. The Met Gala’s leaders have now stepped in and spoken out.
Max Hollein, the Metropolitan Museum’s director and chief executive officer, told CNN on Friday that the event’s primary purpose is to uplift and fund fashion within the museum.
“We will always be grateful for that support from various different sources,” Hollein said.
“I think it’s really important for people to understand, when we talk about the Met Gala, the money really goes into preserving this collection,” he continued, referring to the museum’s expansive collection of costumes and fashion-related artifacts. He added that preserving such pieces is “more challenging, more expensive” than doing so for drawings or paintings.
Hollein said that Bezos and his new wife are providing funds for this preservation and for the longevity of the institution.
“This is not a show on Amazon. This is not a show on Lauren Sánchez’s 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,” he told CNN. “And they don’t want to have it any other way. That’s exactly the donors that we want, and those are the donors that museums like ours need to have.”
Fashion journalist Derek Guy claimed that people are forgetting that the gala is designed for fundraising. “In a political climate when public arts funding is being limited or contested, private fundraising efforts like this are even more important,” Guy wrote on X.
Vogue’s former editor-in-chief and current global chief content officer, Anna Wintour, said they are grateful for the involvement of the Bezoses and praised Sánchez Bezos in particular.
“We’re very grateful for her incredible generosity,” Wintour told CNN in November. “So we’re thrilled she’s part of the night.”
Protests about the ultra-wealthy couple have swept the internet and through New York. Guerilla activism group Everyone Hates Elon has plastered several creative campaigns across the city, including a projection of video interviews with Amazon workers on the Bezoses’ multimillion penthouse near Madison Square Park.
Slogans have also been projected onto the building, reading out “If You Can Buy the Met Gala, You Can Pay More Taxes,” “Boycott the Bezos Met Gala,” and “No Money For Trump’s Billionaires.” In another maneuver nodding to rumors of Amazon’s treatment of its workers, the group managed to sneak in hundreds of bottles of fake urine into the Metropolitan Museum ahead of Monday evening’s red-carpet extravaganza.
A thousand people gave donations to the group for their Met Gala protests, and volunteers across New York supported their efforts. The group has previously trolled billionaire Elon Musk and President Donald Trump with massive, crowdfunded art pieces.
A spokesperson for Everyone Hates Elon said it would be naive for anyone to believe Bezos is sponsoring the Met Gala out of a “love for fashion.”
“He’s using the Met and using Vogue to buy influence and buy sway and to look cool, to be honest,” the spokesperson told the Daily Beast by phone. “It’s not cool how he treats his workers, and it’s not cool how he cozies up to Trump.”
“If you look at what people are going through right now—people can’t afford to put gas in their cars—then you have people wearing millions of dollars’ worth of diamonds to an event hosted by one of Trump’s oligarchs, it looks crazy out of touch,” said the spokesperson. “It feels like the Hunger Games. So if the Met Gala wants to remain at all in touch with popular culture, it should definitely reassess who it lets be involved.”
In April, the city’s mayor, Zohran Mamdani, said that he would skip the 2026 gala, marking a shift from many of his predecessors. Sex and the City actress and one-time mayoral hopeful Cynthia Nixon told the New York Times, “My hat is off to the mayor for not attending.”
“The Met Gala is now giving Bezos exactly the kind of reputation laundering and cultural rocket fuel he needs to keep destroying America,” she added.
The Met Gala is not immune to backlash. While many tout the event’s importance in funding the arts, it has also been labeled tone-deaf and out of touch. In 2024, for instance, demonstrators arrived near the Met to protest the display of opulence and luxury amid the war in Gaza.
This year’s Met Gala, where seats allegedly cost $100,000 and tables are upwards of $350,000, will see around 450 guests. The event is helmed by Vogue’s Anna Wintour and co-chaired by Beyoncé (after a 10-year hiatus), Nicole Kidman, and Venus Williams.
Annually, the gala unveils a new exhibition, which is later opened to the public. 2026 will also mark the opening of the museum’s nearly 12,000-square-foot Condé M. Nast Galleries.
