Lauren Sánchez Bezos is officially becoming a co-queen of the Met Gala.
On Monday morning, the Metropolitan Museum of Art issued a news release announcing the dress code for its Costume Institute fund-raiser on the first Monday in May. A flashbulb fantasy of celebrity, fashion and fabulousness, it is generally described as “the party of the year.”
And though the actual prompt for what guests should wear — “Fashion Is Art” is the official directive — might be newsy enough on its own, even more striking was the detail buried on the second page of the announcement: “Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez Bezos will serve as honorary chairs for the evening.”
Mr. Bezos and Ms. Sánchez Bezos had previously been named as the lead sponsors of both the event and the exhibition it celebrates, but this was the first time they had been anointed as honorary chairs of the party, a position that often comes with a place in the receiving line and a position at the top of the Met steps.
Yet the announcement was delivered less like a big Bezos reveal than an easy-to-overlook addendum. The news was listed at the very end of lengthy paragraph enumerating the other co-chairs of the party (Beyoncé, Nicole Kidman, Venus Williams and Anna Wintour) as well as the 24 members of the party’s host committee. Read too fast, and you could almost miss it.
What that the point? The museum declined to comment as to why it waited to release this particular piece of news. Met Gala-related information is generally revealed at different times — the better to stoke anticipation — and this is the third 2026-gala-related announcement the museum has made. But this is the rare instance in which the lead sponsors will also be the honorary chairs. The news was not acknowledged immediately, perhaps because even the Bezoses’ initial involvement provoked something of an outcry — or perhaps because the deal was not settled till now.
Indeed, when the news that they were sponsors of the event broke on the Met’s Instagram account last year, assorted commentators took issue with the choice.
Increasingly, the relationship between the couple and Anna Wintour, the global editorial director of Vogue, global chief content officer of Condé Nast and mastermind of the Met Gala, is being treated as a sign of the times, for good or ill. It started when Ms. Wintour put Ms. Sánchez Bezos at her wedding on the digital cover of Vogue in June, after publishing an equally laudatory profile in 2023.
Ms. Sánchez Bezos was one of the few brides ever to make the Vogue cover (others included Melania Trump in 2005 and Kim Kardashian in 2014), and for many viewers, it seemed as if Ms. Wintour was selling the magazine, or at least its stylish soul, to Mr. Bezos — with an eye, perhaps, to selling Condé Nast. It seemed to some that power, money and self-interest were what mattered when it came to who merited the attention of Vogue.
Even politics can be put aside. Ms. Wintour is an avowed anti-Trumpist — she has said the president is the one person she will never invite to the Met — while Mr. Bezos and Ms. Sánchez Bezos famously donated to Mr. Trump’s inauguration fund and attended the swearing-in last January, Ms. Sánchez Bezos in a white suit with a visible lace bustier.
Mr. Bezos has long been rumored as a potential purchaser-savior of Vogue’s parent company, in part because he has long been trying to woo high fashion to Amazon, and Vogue is the classic conduit to high fashion. Though that has not come to pass, being associated with the Met Gala may be the next best thing. Amazon has sponsored the event in the past, and the couple made their debut at the gala in 2024, but the current sponsorship is private, not corporate, and it frames the Bezoses as heirs to the Astors, Whitneys and Vanderbilts.
Ms. Wintour herself described Ms. Sánchez Bezos to CNN as a “great lover of costume and obviously of fashion” and said, “We’re very grateful for her incredible generosity.”
When the couple was photographed sitting with Ms. Wintour at the Dior and Schiaparelli couture shows in January, with Ms. Sánchez Bezos trading her signature corseted minidresses for two very proper grande dame skirt suits, the relationship seemed to reach a new stage. Later, Ms. Sánchez Bezos was spotted shopping with the “image architect” Law Roach in various couture ateliers, and the Met moment seemed a likely fait accompli.
Now all of those suspicions have been confirmed. Come May 4, the Bezoses will take their place at the pinnacle of the party. And the resulting image may be proof positive for many that it has become the most visceral expression of a new gilded age.
Vanessa Friedman has been the fashion director and chief fashion critic for The Times since 2014.
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