The annual Met Gala, held on Monday, May 4 this year, has been the focus of controversy. Is Karl Lagerfeld too problematic to be the subject of 2023? Is TikTok, which has just been deemed a national security threat by the U.S. government, a suitable sponsor for the 2024 gala? How small can a designer make Kim Kardashian’s waistline? (This happens almost every year.)
But the 2026 gala celebrating the concurrent exhibition “The Art of Costume,” which collected samples of the sartorial human body from across the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s curatorial departments, proved particularly controversial.
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who was elected amid growing public concern about income inequality, announced he would skip the gathering of frontliners. “My focus is also on affordability, making the most expensive city in America affordable, and that’s what I want to spend a lot of time focusing on,” he told news site Hell’s Gate last month.
Then there was the matter of the night’s sponsors. While fashion brands like Instagram or tech giants typically sponsor the event, this year Amazon co-founder and executive chairman Jeff Bezos and his wife, Lauren Sánchez Bezos, are major donors. They are also honorary presidents. (Co-chairs Beyoncé, Nicole Kidman, Venus Williams and Vogue’s Anna Wintour remain official presenters, while Saint Laurent is sponsoring the exhibition catalogue.)
A guest’s Karl Lagerfeld-themed cape unfurls at the 2023 Met Gala. Lagerfeld, known for his Chanel designs and acerbic judgment, was a central figure in that year’s exhibition. – Nelson Barnard/Getty Images
After the Met announced the Bezoses’ attendance, many social media users — who were among the most enthusiastic promoters of the Met’s charity ball and who tuned in to Vogue’s live broadcast days later to analyze the outfits — called for a boycott. This has become a reality, with actual protests including the “Everybody Hates Elon” (like Musk) group, which has put up posters in New York City over the past few weeks similarly urging a boycott. One article read: “Bezos Met Gala: Brought to You by Worker Exploitation,” referring to longstanding allegations of labor violations surrounding Amazon’s e-commerce operations.
The recurring criticism hasn’t stopped the party from raising huge sums of money: Last year, it raised a record $31 million. (By comparison, the New York Philharmonic’s opening night raised $3.3 million in 2025.)
Max Hollein, the museum’s director and chief executive, said he sees the Met Gala as part of the “history of American philanthropy,” in which people across the political spectrum support cultural and other causes. “Now, maybe there’s more scrutiny, more attention,” he said. “But we will always be grateful for the support from all different sources.”
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (left) and designer Aurora James at the 2021 Met Gala. Ocasio-Cortez’s dress, designed by James, read “TAX THE RICH.” – Mike Coppola/Getty Images
Caroline Kennedy and Jack Schlossberg at the 2017 Met Gala. – George Pimentel/WireImage/Getty Images
The Met Gala is the major fundraiser for the Metropolitan Costume Institute, which houses a collection of more than 33,000 pieces spanning seven centuries. (It is often said that the Costume Institute is the only museum department that raises its own funds, although this is not accurate; each department receives funding from the museum’s overall operating budget and supplements it through fundraising.)
Funds from the gala not only support the purchase of clothing and accessories, but also support the institute’s reference library, which houses more than 800 periodicals and 1,500 designer archives related to the history of fashion and clothing, dating back to the 16th century. The funds also support the conservation of laboratory and storage space, as well as the Costume Institute’s gallery spaces, including the 4,300-square-foot Anna Wintour Costume Center and the new, nearly 12,000-square-foot Condé M. Nast Gallery. Salaries for 29 employees also come from celebration funds. The new gallery, located adjacent to the museum lobby, will allow the Costume Institute’s exhibitions to be open for longer hours, thereby increasing the impact and scope of the department’s exhibitions.
“This is one of the greatest fashion, clothing lines,” Hollein said. Preservation and storage are “more challenging and more expensive” than paintings or drawings, he said. “I think it’s really important for people to understand that when we talk about the Met Gala, funds do go into preserving these collections.”
One of the exhibition halls of “Sleeping Beauty: Awakening Fashion” in 2024. – Jeenah Moon/Reuters
What seems most controversial is the emergence of bold names and huge sums of money surrounding the event. Over the past two decades, Wintour has helped transform the gala from a typical charity gala into a celebrity-driven phenomenon — an effort that has made the museum’s ambitions grow while ticket prices for gala attendees have risen. In 2026, a single ticket will cost $100,000 and a table will cost $350,000, and guests must be invited by the museum to purchase tickets.
The event was perceived as tone-deaf, which meant that when Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wore a dress that read “Tax the Rich,” as she did in 2021, critics rushed to attack and shout hypocrisy. Last year, JFK heir (and former Met Gala attendee) Jack Schlossberg, now launching a congressional campaign in Manhattan, posted on Instagram calling for a boycott of the event, citing “so much going on around the world and here at home.” (The post has been deleted.)
“Boycott Bezos Met Gala” posters have been plastered across New York City ahead of the first Monday in May event. – Angela Weiss/AFP/Getty Images
For most, it’s not the museum that deserves criticism, but the Bezoses’ involvement. On the morning of the gala, a group including the Service Employees International Union, the Center for Strategic Organization and the Amazon union will host a Billionaires-Free Ball in downtown New York, a fashion show where employees from companies like Amazon, Whole Foods and the Washington Post (all with ties to Bezos), as well as Starbucks and Uber, will serve as models wearing clothes by ethically-minded designers.
“If there is money to sponsor this event, there should be money to pay workers fairly,” said Cindy Castro, a New York-based designer who immigrated to the United States from Ecuador and whose work will be at Monday’s event.
“I want to raise awareness about the safety issues that exist in Amazon warehouses,” said April Watson, an Amazon warehouse worker in northeast Georgia who will model on Monday’s show. She said she and her colleagues were under pressure to pick and pack faster and faster, and if they fell into the bottom 5 percent, they received warnings that could lead to dismissal. “When I try to handle very heavy items quickly, I can easily do too much, causing me to injure myself.”
“I want to do whatever I can to help make systemic changes that make warehouses safer for workers like me,” she continued.
In 2012, Amazon sponsored the Met Gala, with Jeff Bezos serving as honorary chair. He posed at that year’s gala with Anna Wintour, Miuccia Prada and Carey Mulligan. (Photo by Steve Eichner/WWD/Penske Media via Getty Images) – Steve Eichner/WWD/Getty Images
In a statement to CNN, an Amazon spokesperson said of warehouse worker expectations, “Safety is our top priority and at the core of everything we do. Amazon does not have set quotas in our facilities. Instead, we evaluate performance based on safe and achievable expectations, taking into account time and tenure, co-worker performance, and compliance with safe work practices.”
This is not the first time Bezos has served as honorary chairman of the Met Gala. In 2012, Amazon sponsored the event, with the tech giant hosting the ceremony himself and posing with stars including Wintour, Miuccia Prada and Carey Mulligan.
Although Watson wasn’t working at Amazon at the time (she joined the company in 2021), she said, “I saw him differently.”
According to Forbes, Bezos’ net worth was estimated at $18.4 billion at the time, making him the 26th richest person in the world. He is now worth an estimated $224 billion, ranking fourth.
Today, Watson says, “Jeff Bezos seems almost like royalty. He’s extremely wealthy, I know he’s the founder of Amazon — he’s very creative, and he’s a great organizer. He built it. Now I feel like he’s celebrating his success and just not interested in those of us at the bottom.”
The Bezoses’ recent high-profile outings — including a lavish wedding in Venice and a series of appearances at Paris Fashion Week in January — have also made the gap between their lifestyle and that of most others more apparent. It also makes them a more obvious target.
Without their support, however, this year’s Met Gala — and its promotion of fashion as an art form, and the way celebrities can tell stories through clothing, entertain us, and even help us better understand our world — would likely be even more limited in scope.
“It’s important that you evaluate the integrity of the agency, the depth of our programs and the proper use of those funds,” Hollein said.
Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez Bezos arrive at Schiaparelli during Paris Fashion Week in January. – Neil Mockford/GC Images/Getty Images
He said the Bezoses’ funding was motivated by the spirit and initiatives of the museum and Costume Institute, not the donor’s personal agenda. “This is not an exhibition on Amazon or a Lauren Sánchez fashion show. We need to be clear, our donors support the Met’s programs, the ideas of our curators and the integrity of the institution,” he said. “They don’t want it any other way. That’s the kind of donors we want, and these are the kind of donors a museum like ours needs.”
Wintour told CNN in late 2025 that Sanchez Bezos would be a “great asset to museums and events,” calling her a “great lover of clothing and fashion.”
In fact, it’s because of the Costume Institute and the Met Gala that many people see fashion as it is today. Holstein noted, for example, that an exhibition about black dandyism last year or this year would highlight “a conversation not just between different arts about dressing the body, but a conversation between different body types.”
After all, museums are not donors’ playgrounds, but places where the world encounters art.
“I’ve always wanted to visit the Met. I love art,” Watson said. “Museums in general allow ordinary people — anyone — to come in and see these priceless works of art face to face.”
For more CNN news and newsletters, create an account at CNN.com