When Anna Wintour arrives at this year’s Met Gala, the "first Monday in May" event that has become the crown jewel of Condé Nast, she will be greeted by clamouring crowds, blinding camera flashes, viral TikToks, and 450 of the most high-profile guests wearing millions of dollars’ worth of couture. Dubbed fashion’s Oscars, the gala is one of the year’s most coveted invitations, especially since Wintour, now 76, took control in 1995. She transformed the high-society Costume Institute fundraiser at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art into a global media spectacle that everyone wants to attend—Wintour is notoriously ruthless with the guest list.
Beyond the red carpet, however, the mood is less convivial. In the run-up to the event, posters appeared around the city, on subway carriages and lampposts, criticising the event’s honorary chair, Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s executive chair and former CEO, for the company’s alleged ties to ICE and worker exploitation. The posters, by British guerrilla group Everyone Hates Elon, read: "Bezos Met Gala: Brought to you by the firm that powers ICE" and "Boycott the Bezos Met Gala." One organiser, who asked to remain anonymous, told The Independent that they want to expose Bezos for using the event to "launder his image." They added: "He’s sipping champagne, while his actions are affecting people all over the world. He’s buying favour, quite literally."
Organisers are planning action on the night, but Bezos is familiar with such protests. Last summer, he was forced to alter his wedding plans at the last minute after the group unfurled a giant banner in Venice’s San Marco Piazza reading: "If you can rent Venice for your wedding, you can pay more tax..." In November, the Met announced that this year’s event would be "made possible"—funded—by the world’s fourth-richest man, worth $240bn, and his wife, Lauren Sánchez Bezos, who were named lead sponsors alongside secondary donors: Vogue’s publisher Condé Nast and fashion house Saint Laurent. What do they get for this? A chance to showboat and secure their inside spot in yet another industry. From presidential inaugurations to space, from film production to fashion, this is one small step for Bezos, one giant leap for his domination of every aspect of our existence.
All of this has been done with Wintour’s blessing. She struck up an odd friendship with the couple before attending their wedding, alongside the Kardashians, Oprah Winfrey, and Leonardo DiCaprio. Reports suggest she even provided styling advice for the event to Sánchez. Wintour responded to initial backlash by insisting that Bezos’s wife would be a "wonderful asset" to the museum and event (this year co-chaired by Venus Williams, Beyoncé, and Nicole Kidman). Sánchez subsequently appeared on a much-derided digital cover of June’s Vogue. Their continued collaboration is only attracting negative attention, something Wintour dislikes. One report this week suggested the event was turning into a "billionaire’s circus." Infamous gossip columnist Rob Shuter quoted an insider remarking: "You paid [for the Met] because Anna mattered… That kind of power? It’s fading fast."
Amy Odell, creator of Back Row, a weekly fashion newsletter and podcast, and author of Anna: The Biography, says that Wintour’s decision to seek funding from Bezos should not have surprised anyone. "Fashion companies are not doing so well right now. LVMH results came out recently. I believe they were down two per cent; the luxury boom from the pandemic is over," says Odell. "So Anna went to them [Bezos and Sánchez], and they’re the primary sponsors. Usually, it is a brand that sponsors, so to speak to individual donors instead of a brand? That is notable." One anonymous fashion insider added: "It’s just indicative of an industry that’s changing—and desperate for cash. We’re all throwing stuff at the wall and seeing what sticks."
The theme this year is "Fashion Is Art." Guests are invited "to consider the many ways that designers use the body as their blank canvas." Will any of the guests use the opportunity to protest the Bezos effect? There is talk of boycotts and protests on the night, but among the attendees, as one fashion stylist tells The Independent, we may not see much: "This is not a daring crowd. Can we expect a teeny tiny pin on the lapel of a jacket? Perhaps. But these guests know what side their bread is buttered, and no one wants to be blacklisted from the Gala, nor from Amazon Prime Studios deals or the pages of Vogue."
As Odell points out, however, Wintour herself is not afraid of making controversial alliances: "She gave Karl Lagerfeld a whole gala, you remember. She’s associated with some pretty controversial people over the course of her career. She wants to do a Galliano exhibit, I hear. She fundraises for the Democratic Party, but after Trump was elected, she went to visit him; she does what she wants to do." While that MO hasn’t harmed Wintour up till now, it remains to be seen what damage this year’s Met may do. It comes with a neat diversion, too, as The Devil Wears Prada 2 click-clacks into cinemas, a return to the screen 20 years after the original—when the world of publishing and Vogue, and Runway, its onscreen counterpart, couldn’t be more different.
The film addresses the challenges faced by magazines in 2026, with Runway fighting for its very survival in a digital age. Wintour’s embracing of the film—even appearing on the May cover of US Vogue with Meryl Streep as Miranda Priestly (the editor inspired by Wintour in her former assistant Lauren Weisberger’s original 2003 book)—has been seen as a "fun" departure from her normal demeanour by many. To those on the inside, however, this and cosying up to Bezos is being viewed as insensitive as Condé Nast lays off workers. Indeed, last week the Condé Nast union criticised a recent round of lay-offs, with the brand’s title Glamour suffering "devastating" cuts which "threatened" its future. The union also condemned the folding of Teen Vogue into Vogue towards the end of last year.
As cultural critic James Wolcott cried in his recent "Air Mail" column: "How things have changed on Planet Wintour." A fashion magazine’s power is encapsulated by Streep’s line from the original film: "Everybody wants to be us," but that power has drooped, Wolcott says. He says that Prada 2 only highlights that "the fashion world has shed much of its relevance, glamour, creativity, and lore—its aspirational allure." Odell remarks that we often misremember Wintour’s hatred of the original film. She says she was actually "a good sport" about its release, even attending a screening for the movie—wearing Prada. And yet a former Vogue staffer tells The Independent that her recent enthusiasm is a product of the fact she stepped down as editor-in-chief last summer, appointing Chloe Malle head of editorial content, and a sign of the times, when immersive film promotion is such big business.
Odell also points out that while appearing on the cover of her own magazine may have removed some of her mystery, it also made perfect sense: there was no way Condé was going to allow that Meryl cover to go to anyone else. "Anna appearing on the cover herself was surprising, and it kind of runs counter to the mystique that has surrounded her for her whole career, which helped make Vogue so interesting and powerful," says Odell. "But if they ignored it, would they be funnelling that access and that attention to another competing title?" The cover was generally well received, with one former staffer describing it as "gimmicky, but very well done."
As the Met looms, the mood among the fashion elite is said to be one of "depressed acceptance" that the invasion of the so-called "tech bros" into the industry has happened with such force in the past year. Besides Bezos’s VIP fast track to the Met, he was also front row at Dior Haute Couture last month. In February, geek-in-chief Mark Zuckerberg sat in the front row of the Raf Simons Prada show at Milan Fashion Week, reported to be a hint at the broader partnership between Meta and the fashion house on some AI-powered smart glasses. One commenter noted his awkwardness, writing: "Tech bro on school picture day." Meanwhile, Bryan Johnson, the eerie billionaire biohacker, walked the catwalk in Paris last month. If the tech bros are coming for fashion, then you can be sure that Anna Wintour won’t just have a seat at the table; she will be at its head.
