Backlash, yes, but the Met Gala will continue ‘at the top of its peak’
“This year, it seems to me, they made it easy for people to attack it,” said Northeastern public relations expert Peter Mancusi.
The haute couture didn’t deliver the only drama at this year’s Met Gala,
But despite the backlash to the event’s uber-wealthy honorary chairs, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and his wife, Lauren Sánchez Bezos, the gala will continue to be one of the hottest tickets in New York City, Northeastern public relations and fashion experts said.
“The good news for the Met Gala is the good news for everybody that goes through a spate of criticism — the news cycle moves so quickly,” said Peter Mancusi, an associate teaching professor in the journalism department who led the crisis management practice in the Boston office of public relations firm Weber Shandwick.
Frances McSherry, a professional costume designer and teaching professor at Northeastern, agreed.
“It’s going to continue, I think it’s got some more innovation in it,” McSherry said. “I’d say it’s probably at the top of its peak, unless it really shifts to something else, and I don’t see that.”
The Met Gala, which the New York Times describes as “the party of the year” and the “East Coast Oscars,” is held annually on the first Monday in May as a fundraiser for The Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City and as an opening for the institute’s spring show.
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This year was a big year for the gala.
First, Beyonce returned after a decade-long absence. Secondly, the event also opened the institute’s new home, Condé M. Nast Galleries, which took over the 12,000-square-foot, ground-floor space formerly occupied by the museum’s gift shop.
The gala is known for its exclusive guest list curated by Anna Wintour, the longtime editor-in-chief of American Vogue magazine and now chief content officer for Condé Nast and global editorial director of Vogue. Each year, the event draws members of New York high society, fashion designers, celebrities and more. Tickets for this year’s event cost $100,000 each, according to CBS News.
But in a year with political unrest, inflation and “the word affordability is mentioned a billion times a day,” Mancusi said. “It just seems out of touch.”
The decision to name the Bezoses as honorary chairs prompted weeks of protest in New York City and online prior to the event, according to the New York Times, worries in the gossip pages and scathing criticism afterwards about the event as “out of touch,” “tone deaf,” and an act of “reputation laundering” for the controversial Bezoses.
“This year, it seems to me, they made it easy for people to attack it,” Mancusi said. “There are certain events like the Met Gala that crystallize for a lot of people what’s wrong in the country. There is no nod to the common people at the Met Gala. … It is what it is — celebrity land.”
Perhaps nobody crystallizes that sentiment in human form more than Bezos, his wife and the other “techbros.” They drop $50 million on a Venetian wedding, send themselves and their celebrity friends into space for fun, subcontract delivery workers to allegedly skirt labor laws, fire hundreds of thousands of government workers and terminate millions in grants in an attempt to reduce the deficit.
“The connection between Amazon and what Amazon does in many, many different ways, and this kind of performance of high fashion is not sitting well with many people,” McSherry said.
But does the backlash rise to the level of a crisis? Mancusi said no.
“They probably said, ‘Listen, we are going to get criticism. It will go away. But let’s stress the things that we always stress, how much money we raise and what it’s going for.’” Mancusi said. “Now, is that going to get drowned out by the spectacle every year? It always does.”
The Metropolitan Museum of Art did not respond to a request for comment.
At the same time, both Mancusi and McSherry said the event provided notable benefits, not the least of which was that it raised a record $42 million for the institute, according to Fortune magazine.
And despite the event being admittedly “over the top,” as McSherry said, the gala also showcased new, young designers and made fashion “a little more democratic” by inviting not just supermodels or celebrities but including athletes, social media influencers and more. For example, designer Robert Wun dressed tennis player Naomi Osaka, McSherry noted.
“It has been highlighting our shift in understanding about what fashion is, what it’s about, who it’s for, why we do it, all of that,” McSherry said. “The idea of fashion has changed … from something that was frivolous, that was not necessary, that was not interesting, that was not like scholarship, into something that has been realized as being an art form, a form of communication, a way that we can express ourselves, either directly or indirectly with what it is that we wear.”
