Anna Wintour described the American philanthropist and former journalist Lauren Sánchez Bezos as a “great lover of costume and obviously of fashion” when requested about criticism surrounding the Bezos’s position as sponsors of the 2026 Met Gala.
Speaking to NCS in Doha, Qatar, on the inaugural Franca Fund Gala devoted to the late Vogue Italia editor Franca Sozzani, Wintour stated she believed Sánchez Bezos can be a “wonderful asset to the museum and the event.”
“We’re very grateful for her incredible generosity,” Wintour advised NCS, “so we’re thrilled she’s part of the night.”
Jeff Bezos and Sánchez Bezos’ had been unveiled as lead sponsors of the occasion final week, together with secondary sponsors French luxurious model Saint Laurent and Vogue writer Condé Nast.
Wintour relinquished her title as Vogue US’s editor-in-chief earlier this 12 months, however stays Vogue’s world editorial director and chief content material officer for Condé Nast, which implies she nonetheless oversees the annual Met Gala.
The announcement of Bezos’s sponsorship drew instant backlash on social media, with critics arguing that their involvement highlights a shift in direction of billionaire management of cultural establishments. Others have argued that the cash might be higher spent on different causes.
“Great theme,” wrote one person underneath a video on The Metropolitan museum’s official Instagram asserting that subsequent 12 months’s can be “Costume Art,” earlier than including: “However, stop platforming Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez with art and fashion, two places that these two awful, unfettered capitalists will never belong in, no matter how much money they want to throw around to buy culture they have never cultivated and will never inhabit.”
Traditionally, the gala and its accompanying exhibit have been supported by luxurious homes, together with this 12 months’s occasion, which was backed by Louis Vuitton. However, previous sponsors have additionally included massive tech corporations reminiscent of TikTok, Instagram (owned by Meta), Apple, Yahoo, and even Amazon. The latter sponsored the Met Gala in 2012 and Bezos, its founder, served as an honorary chair.
For some, the choice to sponsor the occasion is indicative of the couple’s ambition to acquire cultural and trend legitimacy, with parallels being drawn between Sánchez Bezos and Kim Kardashian’s rise inside the trend business. It was solely a decade in the past that Kardashian — a good friend of Sánchez Bezos — remodeled her picture from actuality TV star to change into a big determine inside excessive trend circles, thanks partially to a nod of approval from Wintour and a Vogue cover with Ye, the rapper previously often called Kanye West, with whom she had a seven-year marriage.
Anna Wintour responds to backlash round Bezos sponsorship of Met Gala.
While Sánchez Bezos has not publicly mentioned her intentions, the transfer marks a deeper foray into the style world. The couple missed the 2025 Met Gala due to their wedding celebrations however attended the occasion in 2024 and posed for the quilt of Vogue US in June this 12 months. They had been not too long ago noticed at Paris Fashion Week, the place they attended exhibits for Chanel and Balenciaga, carrying archival classic seems to be curated by movie star stylist Molly Dickson (whose shoppers additionally embrace the singer Lana del Rey and actor Sydney Sweeney). Sánchez Bezos’s Earth Fund additionally this 12 months introduced a $6.25 million partnership with the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA) to promote sustainability in trend.
As a part of their announcement, the Met additionally revealed {that a} gallery area can be named after the late founding father of Condé Nast, in recognition of a donation (the quantity of which was undisclosed) from the media firm.
Amy Odell, the New York-based writer of Wintour’s biography “Anna,” noticed that the timing coincided with current layoffs on the writer, which impacted a number of titles together with Teen Vogue — a call that “people were very emotional about, because they cut the young, diverse voices who were doing political coverage for a young audience,” stated Odell in an Instagram video. “Condé Nast is making cuts. The gala is going on. Rich people are ‘riching.’ The optics are kind of uncomfortable. Maybe these are just going to be the optics of the gala every year until something changes with income inequality in this country.”