Jeffrey Bezos is — rather unfortunately — branching out to fashion.
The Amazon founder, along with his wife, Lauren Sánchez Bezos, made headlines earlier in February when they were announced as the lead sponsors and honorary chairs of the 2026 Met Gala. The Vogue-organized event, which takes place this year on May 4, has long been billed as “fashion’s biggest night out” where celebrities and the fashion industry’s most influential figures have come together to raise funds for the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
However, the Bezos’ involvement with the gala has sparked backlash from activists, especially considering the uber-rich couple’s alignment with the Trump administration and the ongoing allegations of worker rights abuses at Amazon.
The activist group Everyone Hates Elon (as in, Musk) in particular has launched a boycotting campaign against this year’s gala. Over the past few weeks leading up to the event, the group’s members have plastered the subways and walls of New York with posters that highlight all the reasons why a tech billionaire like Bezos should not be sitting on the gala’s committee. “The Bezos Met Gala: Brought to you by worker exploitation,” read one poster.
Everyone Hates Elon has also reverted to more creative acts of protest, including hiding hundreds of “piss bottles” around the museum in reference to Amazon’s treatment of its warehouse workers. The Met’s gift shop now also features a number of tongue-in-cheek commemorative plates, like one that features a photo of the Bezoses and a caption that reads, “The Bezos Met Gala: The World’s Most Expensive Midlife Crisis.”
Other critics have also pointed out how the gala has devolved from fashion’s most exclusive event into a night for tech’s biggest social climbers. “What used to be a closed-door networking event for fashion people is now a big-box clout store for the richest people on the planet,” wrote Amy Odell, the journalist and author behind the book Anna: The Biography. Odell also pointed out that tech giants such as OpenAI, Meta, and Snap Inc. have all purchased tables at this year’s gala, each of which cost $100,000 a ticket (in contrast to last year’s $75,000).
Although this isn’t the first time that the Bezos have rubbed elbows with Vogue and its gala — in 2012, Jeffrey sat as the gala’s honorary chair, and in 2025, Lauren was the cover star of Vogue’s digital June issue — it’s definitely one of the more controversial moments the event has seen in recent years. High-profile figures have already confirmed that they’ll be skipping the evening, including Zendaya and Meryl Streep, although no specific (or political) reasons have yet to be given. New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani noted in an interview with Hell Gate that he and his wife, Rama Duwaji, will be absent from the gala in order to focus on “affordability and making the most expensive city in the United States affordable.”
