OPINION: Culture or commerce?
The Met Gala has quietly become fashion’s Super Bowl, a night where culture, celebrity and chaos collide under one very expensive roof.
‘Met Monday’ dominates timelines, headlines and group chats, and I will admit I got pulled into it too, to the point my 21st birthday was Met Gala themed. While I did have a dress code, I drew the line at charging £100,000 per head.
Beneath the fabric, it is worth asking whether the Met Gala is still about fashion at all, or simply power dressed up as culture.
From charity supper to celebrity circus
The annual event began in 1948 as a midnight supper to raise funds for the Metropolitan Museum of Art Costume Institute, however, Vogue’s Editor in Chief, Anna Wintour, transformed it into the extravagant event it is today.
The guest list, once centred on cultural influence such as artists, musicians, actors, and designers has increasingly shifted towards figures whose presence guarantees headlines rather than ties to fashion.
While intended to reinforce exclusivity, the red carpet suggests something else entirely. Expense over distinction.
Power dressing
As you may have guessed, tickets for the Gala come at a price vastly out of reach for the majority of society. This year saw the tickets at their highest price ever at $100,000 each.
Most of our beloved celebrities aren’t reaching into their deep pockets as many are brought by fashion houses, handpicked to wear and promote the designers.
This results in not just a gathering of celebrity elite, but a controlled ecosystem of wealth reinforcing the gala as a closed-off world designed for corporate promotion rather than charity.
This year’s event only sharpened such tensions, largely due to Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez making their debut as honourary co-chairs, a role typically reserved for cultural figures.
Reports also noted the growing presence of tech giants at the events with Open AI, Meta, Snapchat and more securing tables, and visibility, at the Met Gala.
The criticism isn’t just about wealth, but who gets to be celebrated. In this case, a man whose company holds major government contracts including infrastructure used by agencies like ICE.
Met with backlash
The 2026 Met Gala has been subject to protests and online backlash, including comparisons to The Hunger Games and alleged promotion of ‘eat the rich’ mentality, both of which have been circulating around the event online over the past few years.
Yesterday, in real time outside the venue, projections and demonstrations were cast on skyscrapers around New York. including ‘If you can buy the Met Gala, you can pay more tax’ on Bezos’s penthouse.
Inside, activists staged symbolic protests referencing labour concerns linked to companies like Amazon with ‘pee bottles’ placed around the museum, alluding to claims about warehouse workers lacking adequate break time.
Additionally, New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani became the first mayor since 2002 not to attend the Met Gala, and instead used ‘Met Monday’ to shine the spotlight on six local garment workers.
“The fashion industry is made possible by the thousands of workers behind the scenes – seamstresses, tailors, retail workers, delivery drivers – whose immense talent and dedication deserves to be celebrated.”
While the Met Gala still calls itself a celebration of fashion, art and philanthropy; what it increasingly reflects is something else entirely.
At this point, the most exclusive thing about it might be believing it still is.
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