It will be interesting to see how this year’s Met Gala plays out, especially with Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez sponsoring the event and acting as co-chairs. If I’m being honest, I doubt that the Sanchez-Bezos presence will cause much of a stir, nor do I think that many celebrities will care one way or the other. I saw the guest list for the Bezos wedding last year – A-listers showed up because they wanted to kiss-up to one of the richest men in the world and his tacky bride. Still, for Anna Wintour to give her blessing to the Bezoses, they needed to write a big check. An eight-figure check.
Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez Bezos paid at least $10 million to sponsor the Met Gala Monday night, Page Six can reveal. This puts the billionaire couple, who will sit with close pals including Kris Jenner at the party, firmly in Anna Wintour’s good graces.
They are also honorary co-chairs of fashion’s biggest night, alongside Beyoncé, Nicole Kidman, Venus Williams and Wintour herself — the former Vogue editor who uses the starry annual event to raise money for the Anna Wintour Costume Center at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
“The Bezoses are where the American dream is at right now for status, wealth and style,” former Vogue editor William Norwich told Page Six. “They display conspicuous consumption [and] they have the ‘AWOK’ — the Anna Wintour OK.”
But for many in the fashion crowd, Wintour’s courting of America’s new “bizarro” royalty — as one insider dubbed the Bezoses — who this week celebrated Britain’s King Charles and Queen Camilla at a state dinner at the White House, where Sanchez Bezoz wore 200 carats of emeralds – goes against what the Met Gala stands for.
“I’m heartbroken,” admitted a frequent Met Gala guest and fashion insider. “It’s being able to buy yourself into [the good graces of] Anna and the Met.”
Wintour’s eyes, it seem, are on the bottom line: Last year, she raised $31 million, the biggest gross in the event’s 77-year history. Norwich said that 76-year-old Wintour — who remains Chief Content Officer for Condé Nast and Global Editorial Director of Vogue after handing over the day-to-day reins of the fashion bible to Chloe Malle earlier this year — would have first approached the Bezoses about financing the gala at least two years ago, which the fashion insider agreed with. Despite this, other sources told us Wintour reached out after the Bezos wedding to make the request.
Sources told Page Six that Bezos paid at least $10 million to sponsor the ball, which this year has the theme of “Costume Art” and has the Bezos name plastered all over the invites. In fact, it could well be up to $20 million, said another source in the know.
My guess is that the total cost was probably $20 million or higher. I doubt that Wintour would have signed off on “sponsoring the Met Gala,” her baby, for anything less than $20 million. And yes, Jeff and Lauren are being completely open about what they’re doing too – they’re buying access and they’re buying the cultural cachet of the gala. Jeff wants his tacky wife to be embraced by the A-list fashionistas and he’s willing to spend a lot of money to make it happen.
Interestingly enough, the NYT had a fascinating story late last week about how the gala might end at some point, or significantly change. The reason? Because for the past decade, the Costume Institute has been quietly funneling gala revenues into a nest-egg “endowment” which could easily fund the Costume Institute’s exhibitions and operations for years to come. Per the NYT: “By 2030 — possibly as soon as 2028 — the Costume Institute will have saved enough of a nest egg to potentially support its own basic operations for the foreseeable future, no matter what happens in the greater museum economy or with the gala itself.” The Costume Institute’s director told the Times that the goal is to not be reliant on Met Gala revenues forever, especially after they had to cancel the gala during the pandemic. He called the gala “not sustainable.” I get all of that… but why not continue throwing the gala and just use the money for other causes, perhaps?
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Backgrid, Cover Images.
