The Tech Gala
A money-making event in pop culture decline.
Happy Pop Syllabus Friday!
Between that cruise ship floating around with the hantavirus, the far-right making significant gains in British electoral politics, and literally everything else, my feeling is we need to unplug Earth and leave it off for a while. Reboot! Return to factory settings! Try again! Or maybe those aliens can finally invade us and take over? Surely, alien rule can’t be any worse than this.
Moving on….
This past Monday was Met Gala Monday. If you’ve followed me on Instagram for the past few years, you’ll know it’s typically the day when I risk my career by doing red carpet reviews. This year, for the first time in a while, I chose not to. I wish I could say it’s because I developed some restraint and realized it’s not worth the risk of isolating potential podcast guests or people I might one day write TV shows for to get some jokes off on Instagram. Alas, I am not yet that prudent.
Like many of you, I spent Monday night scrolling through all the outfits, but sadly, I found this year’s looks profoundly underwhelming. So underwhelming, I couldn’t even conjure up a snide remark. And look, for the most part, the clothes were perfectly fine. There were a few standout moments, but honestly, I’ve already forgotten them. Forgetting clothes that were all over my Instagram feed on Monday, by Friday, might be a clue that much like every millennial woman over 37, I’m officially in “perimenopause”. But I don’t think I can attribute my lack of enthusiasm to being in my luteal phase (again).
This year’s theme (Costume Art!) should have provided a bounty of inspiration for all involved. The dress code was “Fashion is Art”! It was supposed to be a celebration of the intersection of fashion and fine art, particularly the various iterations of the dressed body across art history. What an opportunity for wonder! Sadly, there wasn’t much there.
It’s not lost on me that so many of the clothes from the first Met Gala, primarily sponsored by Big Tech*, had a strange AI feel. And when I say AI, it’s not because they were futuristic or seductive in the way things forged from technology can often be. But they felt AI in the boring way that artificial intelligence tends to converge everything towards the mean. The designs weren’t that bad or that good, but the ‘just right’ feel they exuded made them seem like clothes generated by ChatGPT when given the prompt ‘Costume Art’.
I suspect part of the uninspired feel of this year’s Met is because ‘Fashion is Art’, as a theme, is pretty… well, uninspired. It’s the equivalent of a mother throwing a truck-themed birthday party for her son, who likely has ADHD, but she calls him “energetic” to cope. A theme borne of guilt, duty, and dread. It is clichéd; an idea you come up with when you are operating at the maximum of your bare minimum. Now am I comparing Anna Wintour and Andrew Bolton (chief curator of the Costume Institute1) to exhausted parents who mean well but just can’t be bothered. Yes, I am. Because this year’s Met Gala theme and decisions gave - “You know what? Screw it. Fashion is Art will have to do, and we’ll take the money from whoever’s got it while we’re at it”.
Speaking of money!
The biggest story and controversy leading up to the gala was the fact that the official event sponsors and co-chairs were Lauren Sanchez Bezos and her husband, Jeff2. Protest signage popped up around New York City; some called for a boycott, and the guerrilla activist group ‘Everyone Hates Elon left 300 bottles of fake urine around the Met Museum as a form of civil disobedience. The idea behind the stunt was to punch up at the billionaire class, but in reality, I think it punched down, since the people who had to clean up all those bottles were not billionaires; they were likely working-class.
Weird urine protests aside, I do think we need people who care enough about wealth inequality to protest Bezos and his ever-growing empire. We need these passionate activists because, unfortunately, the world is filled with people like me. A champagne socialist who orders from Amazon so frequently, last Christmas, my eldest cocofelon asked me why Santa would deliver his presents on a sleigh when he could just use Amazon. Yes, dear friends. My Amazon addiction runs so deep that it has made my children prematurely spot the narrative inconsistencies in Santa’s lore.
The arguments against Bezos sponsoring the Met Gala are multiple and varied. I won’t list them all here because it mostly comes down to the fact that normal human beings find Lauren and Jeff Bezos grotesque and don’t need much of an excuse to dislike anything they do.
There’s a strangely elitist argument I’ve seen circulating, that the presence of Lauren Sanchez Bezos and Jeff somehow diminishes the credibility of the Met Gala itself. I think this is more of a reflection of our collective preoccupation with the idea that there is a right, noble, and better way to be rich. Lauren Sanchez, with her obvious plastic surgery, naked ambition, and relentless social climbing, is the wrong kind of rich. Personally, I enjoy the type of possibly demented rich woman who shows up to an inauguration in lingerie, but covers up for the Met Gala. What can I say? I am Nigerian, so I am easily charmed by madness.
One could argue that Jeff and Lauren spending $10 million to co-host the Met Gala is their way of buying their way into high society. They’re using their vast financial means to co-opt the institutional heft and gravitas of the Met Museum. Because let’s be honest, though this couple possesses wealth in abundance, what they lack (and quite clearly crave) is a certain type of gravitas, a certain air of seriousness with a dash of cool. The Met Museum, on the other hand, has all of these things. It’s a straightforward transaction, really. The Met takes the Bezos money; in turn, Jeff and Lauren are associated with high culture (with a capital C). This could be what is happening, and if it is, good for them. There have been far worse Faustian pacts.
What I don’t buy into is this idea that The Met is above taking money from people like Lauren and Jeff. The Met Gala literally exists to fundraise for the Metropolitan Museum’s Costume Institute. Its entire premise is taking money from the donor class, and given that they once took money from the Sacklers, it’s clear they’re pretty agnostic about how the donor class makes its money. And look, if a billionaire is going to spend $10 million on anything, I think they should be supporting the arts. Or supporting me. In that sense, the Bezos’ giving their money to the Met Gala is ostensibly a good thing. They are billionaires doing what most people expect of billionaires3.
The reason Anna Wintour’s tenure as the Met Gala’s chair has been remarkable is that she has transformed what was once a charity event for a local museum into a global spectacle4. Wintour is a master at courting the donor class because she understands the power of another class of people - the celebrity. Everyone, regardless of their socio-economic background, gender, race, or sexuality, wants to be around celebrities. The celebrity’s role in the Met Gala spectacle is to be bait. It’s pretty dehumanizing when you think about it, but that’s what the Met Gala is at its core - an event where the donor class is willing to part with their money because they get to be around celebrities.
I know we want to imbue the Met Gala with sophistication that’s far “above” the likes of Lauren Sanchez Bezos, but that sophistication was never really there. All it is is the first Monday in May, when some wealthy hedge-fund manager takes his emotionally neglected wife out for a glamorous night5. He pays $350K for the privilege of his wife seeing Beyoncé up close. His wife then goes and brags to her friends at the Yale club, and for the next few weeks, she complains much less. That hedge fund manager is paying for his peace. The wife is getting the chance to feel alive again because a Tribeca loft and Southampton home can’t fill the gaping hole in your heart when your husband works all the time. The rich cry too, etc., etc. All that to say, this is not an event that we should feel invested in defending its honor!
Now, if you read the headlines and the commentary online, you might conclude the Met Gala was a flop. People are even calling it the Meh Gala (creative!). And look, it’s clear in terms of its pop culture status, the Met Gala as an idea seems less aspirational and alluring. Though I think that’s less about the Met Gala itself, and more about the fact that the general public’s appetite for hedonistic distractions is waning. They are increasingly finding any showy displays of wealth disgusting. This is not surprising. Times are tough.
But I don’t think Anna Wintour cares much about what the general public thinks or about the negative headlines. The Met Gala has never been and will never be for us. As with most things nowadays (elections, food quality, legislation), the views of the masses don’t actually matter. Institutions only care about the feelings of the rich. If anything, I think Anna Wintour will consider Monday a victory. Why? The Met Gala this year raised a record-breaking $42 million. Lest we forget, the Met Museum is a non-profit, and 60% of US nonprofits have budgets under $50,000. For the average nonprofit in this country, having access to $42 million overnight would be transformative.
I’ll speak for the non-profit that is myself. If I woke up with that sum in my bank account, it would be enough to buy my dream house on Zillow and finally hire a private intelligence agency to play pranks on my enemies (something I often fantasize about).
That being said, while $42 million would turbocharge your average non-profit and be a life-changing amount for most of us, given the amount of money in that room, it is a rather paltry sum. Scrap that, it’s pathetic. $42 million isn’t even enough to purchase Lauren and Jeff’s Beverly Hills home, which is reportedly worth $165 million. It couldn’t buy you Kylie Jenner’s plane (she was in attendance). If any of the billionaires present woke up to find that $42 million was all they had left in their bank account, my bet is they would jump off their super yacht straight into the ocean.
So yes, it was a record-breaking night, but it turns out the donor billionaire class isn’t actually that generous6. Who would have thought it!
So what is the future of the Met Gala?
