The Met Gala drama: old money versus the oligarchy

Yes, it is THAT Monday again, that day in the year where a ceremonial gathering of cultural power disguised as a fashion party gets attention from media all over the planet. It is, of course, the Met Gala, a charity fundraiser for the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, a red-carpet spectacle and a showcase for haute couture and artistic fashion. One could say it is essentially where luxury capitalism stages itself as art, and a coronation ceremony for the rich and popular cultural elites, a modern-day Versailles ball of late capitalism if you like.

This year a guerrilla activist group is covering New York with posters criticizing the billionaire Jeff Bezos’ involvement in the event, a fund-raiser for the Metropolitan Museum. This is what happens when cultural aristocracy gets their noses snubbed by tech oligarchy.

“The Bezos Met Gala: Brought to you by worker exploitation,” read, according to the NYTimes, one poster plastered on a wall a few blocks from the museum, seemingly alluding to allegations of worker mistreatment at Amazon fulfilment centers.

The group, which according to NY Times describes itself as anti-billionaire, argues that the ultrawealthy represent systemic economic issues. And yes, that is true. Yet the Met Gala was never a people’s carnival hijacked by billionaires. It was already the playground of wealth, exclusivity, and carefully curated social hierarchy.

I’m no fan of the Bezos, let that be clear. But when it comes to all the voices hitting social media now, lamenting how sad this is for the world of fashion, I would dare say that the outrage is less about capitalism entering fashion than which kind of capitalists are arriving at the table. That outrage only makes sense if people pretend the event was ever artist-first to begin with. But the discomfort now seems less about money entering fashion than about a new class of money displacing the old cultural gatekeepers.

Take Anna Wintour, an institutional power broker who is considered the architect behind the Met Gala as a Global Spectacle, elevating fashion beyond simple clothing to be treated as art, intellectual discourse and social signalling. OK, so the Met Gala existed before her. But through Wintour’s involvement, it has become the world’s most defining fashion happening, and an international cultural event rather than simply a museum fundraiser. And most important, she has helped reinforce the idea that fashion deserved institutional seriousness comparable to film, architecture, or contemporary art. The mythology around her, as intensified by “The Devil Wears Prada” turned her into a symbol of elite fashion authority itself. She represents a curated form of elitism, not merely wealth.

In Wintour’s world money alone is not sufficient, cultural authority should sit with insiders like herself. Bring on the Bezos. The tech oligarch worldview often bypasses those rituals entirely with them it is all about raw capital unconcerned with the old rules of taste. Wintour spent decades making luxury feel aspirational – for a select few – and aesthetically justified, while tech billionaires represent capitalism in a more naked and transactional form. Both operate within elite systems, but they embody different models of power.

The irony is that fashion has long comforted itself with the illusion that it was a refined form of elitism rather than crude capitalism.  Something old, European, about genes and origins and traditions, ideas that seems to live on long after ugly truths of how the industry really operates should have shattered all illusions. In this picture, the editor, curator, designer, and tastemaker imagine themselves as guardians of culture rather than servants of wealth. Yet, wealth has always been tolerated as luxury fashion has depended on billionaires, monarchs, heiresses, conglomerates, and industrial fortunes.

But Silicon Valley money is different, mainly because it doesn’t necessarily respect the old hierarchy. Tech wealth often treats cultural institutions as assets to acquire rather than temples to preserve. It is a type of wealth that no longer asks permission to enter. Because why seek approval from Vogue if you can purchase the entire media ecosystem? Why impress the aristocracy if you can outbid it? The old elite may still have aesthetic authority, but the new elite has infrastructural authority with platforms, data, logistics, cloud computing, media distribution, aerospace, AI. That’s deeply threatening to legacy cultural institutions.

In recent years, the gala and the Costume Institute’s corresponding exhibition have often been sponsored by major fashion houses such as Chanel, Louis Vuitton or Saint Laurent but also tech giants like Apple and Instagram. When it comes to the special annoyance toward Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez Bezos, it stems from the couple’s display of extreme wealth in a world that struggles. That is a whole article in itself. Still, the outrage surrounding them sponsoring one of the most elitist happenings in the world, could not be more ironic. It feels less like a defence of artistic purity, than an anxiety attack from a cultural aristocracy realizing it may no longer control the gates. Pardon me if I find that aspect of the drama just a little bit amusing.