Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez Bezos paid at least $10 million to sponsor the Met Gala, Page Six revealed on Monday night.
This means the billionaire couple, who will be joined by close friends including Kris Jenner at the party, are firmly in Anna Wintour’s good graces.
They are also honorary co-chairs of fashion’s biggest night, alongside Beyoncé, Nicole Kidman, Venus Williams, and former Vogue editor Wintour herself, using the annual extravaganza to raise funds for the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Anna Wintour Costume Center.
“The Bezoses are where the American dream is now being realized in terms of status, wealth and style,” former Vogue editor-in-chief William Norwich told Page Six. “They’re showing significant consumption, (and) they’ve got ‘AWOK,’ or Anna Wintour OK.”
But for many in the fashion world, Wintour’s courtship of America’s new “weird” royal family – as one source called the Bezos – Sánchez Bezos wore a 200-carat emerald when they celebrated Britain’s King Charles and Queen Camilla at a state dinner at the White House this week – goes against the grain of the Met Gala.
“It’s heartbreaking,” admitted the fashion insider and regular Met Gala guest. “I can surrender to Anna and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.”
Sánchez Bezos, 56, famously earned the endorsement of his winter tour last June when he appeared on the digital cover of Vogue to promote his lavish Venice wedding to the world’s third-richest man, with wedding guests including Kim Kardashian, Oprah Winfrey and Leonardo DiCaprio. There were even rumors that Wintour helped the bride choose her Dolce & Gabbana dress, but sources close to the couple sniffed this out.
“To me, this is not just about the gala, it’s a reflection of broader changes in the world we live in,” said Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, a former Vogue special events planner best known for running the gala for more than a decade and often cited as its mastermind. “There was a time when having access to a space like the Met Gala, or even the pages of Vogue, wasn’t something you could easily get; it was something you grew through your influence, your work, and your influence. It brought a sense of fame that felt earned, not traded.
“The celebration has evolved,” added Winston Wolkoff, who wrote the bestselling “Melania and Me: The Rise and Fall of Our Friendship with the First Lady” about his time working in the White House. “And in many ways, it became something different. It used to be a true celebration of designers, their muses, and the artistry behind fashion. Everyone on that carpet felt purposefully like they were part of a larger story.”
“I feel like that sense of purpose is less clear now.”
Winter’s eyes seem to be on the end goal. Last year, she raised $31 million, making it the biggest raise in the event’s 77-year history.
Norwich said Wintour, 76, who remains Condé Nast’s chief content officer and Vogue’s global editorial director after handing over the day-to-day reins of the fashion bible to Chloe Malle earlier this year, first approached Bezoses about funding the gala at least two years ago, and fashion insiders would have agreed. Nevertheless, other sources say that Winter reached out to make the request after Bezos’ wedding.
As of April, Bloomberg estimated Bezos’ wealth at between $230 billion and $241 billion. He remains chairman of the company he started in 1995 as an online bookstore in his garage in Bellevue, Washington.
Bezos paid at least $10 million to sponsor the ball, sources told Page Six. This year’s ball is themed “Costume Art,” and Bezos’ name is plastered all over the invitation. In fact, the amount could reach up to $20 million, another person familiar with the matter said.
We have reached out to representatives from the Bezoses and the Metropolitan Museum of Art for comment.
Interestingly, when Mr. Bezos, 62, first sponsored a gala through Amazon in 2012, and Mr. Wintour gave Mr. Bezos some fashion advice before the event, no one blinked an eye, said fashion writer Amy O’Dell. But at that time he did not have a va-va-voom bride in his arms.
And despite the “snobbery” of many in the fashion world, the couple’s sheer power and authority cannot be ignored. Indeed, they are VICs, or in fashion parlance, very important clients.
“They are part of the 2% of fashion buyers who account for 40% of luxury goods sales,” Odell says. “And fashion has been realigned to suit this group. Lauren is typical of this clientele. She’s trying to make flaunting material excess OK again… a lot of wealthy people want to do that.”
Sanchez Bezos told the New York Times last month that he was “very proud” of the figure-hugging white Alexander McQueen pantsuit he wore to President Donald Trump’s inauguration in January 2025. There, her lace bra was exposed to the camera. But she was also aware of the public criticism that followed.
“I understand,” she told the outlet. “There’s no race in the White House. It’s in the spotlight.”
“They want to show off jewelry and gowns and haute couture on Instagram,” Odell continued. “And some in the industry are trying to embrace this from a business perspective. You can buy the product and show it off.”
That said, “the fashion industry is a left-handed industry, and a lot of people don’t like to see them involved,” she added.
As Page Six Hollywood reported this week, Met Gala regular and Moda Operandi entrepreneur Laurent Santo Domingo will be absent, as will a number of top designers, including Louis Vuitton’s Nicolas Ghesquière and JW Anderson’s Jonathan Anderson.
Oscar winner Meryl Streep, who plays the fictional Wintour in the movie “The Devil Wears Prada,” also declined a request to co-chair. One person said this had nothing to do with Bezos. “Meryl has been invited to the Met Gala for years, but has never attended. Although she admires Vogue and Anna and her incredible imagination and stamina, Meryl has never been completely on stage for herself,” the rep said.
Another fashion insider said: “The Metropolitan Museum of Art has been an elitist party for as long as it’s existed. Anna puts a lot of pressure on herself to beat the previous year, but Lauren and Jeff don’t have that.”
O’Dell said Winter could sell more tickets and chairs, but she likes to keep it exclusive.
Individual ticket prices in 2026 will be $100,000, up from $75,000 last year. The price of the table is $350,000 and will remain unchanged starting in 2025.
For the past few years, Wintour has been courting some of Big Tech’s biggest names, who are keen to buy up the table and give it influence.
In her Back Row newsletter, O’Dell writes that tech company executives “know that there is enormous profit to be made by being seen as a platform for fashion influence that could not be bought and sold at the Met Gala or anywhere else 25 years ago. All of these businesses need to hire women.”
This year’s table buyers include OpenAI, Meta, and Snapchat. Additionally, meth billionaire Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla will reportedly be attending the gala for the first time.
“Are all tech billionaires undergoing midlife makeovers?” O’Dell laughed.
Bezos himself had an extraordinary experience. For Jeff Rothman, an early Amazon executive, Bezos’ appearance at the Met Gala is at odds with the “slightly nerdy” man he once knew, who wore “cheap businessman clothes” of blue button-downs and khakis.
However, “he was always interested in the business of fashion. He didn’t have any personal fashion sense, but he wanted Amazon to get into the fashion business. At one point, we had a concept for Amazon Black, which was a fashion site. He really wanted us to be able to sell apparel,” Rothman said.
Since divorcing his first wife, Mackenzie Scott, in 2019, Mr. Bezos has undergone a muscular transformation, especially under the guidance of his second wife, often favoring close-fitting shirts and boldly colored jackets.
“I’m impressed by how healthy he has become,” said Rothman, author of books including “The Amazon Way.” “It took decades, but he is an example that if you set your mind to something, you can do it.”
But Rothman added, “I feel like his life is more about him and Lauren than Amazon at this point…I don’t fully understand what his personal branding is.”
Bezos’ expensive Met Gala appearance comes at another cost. Protesters are expected to crowd outside the event, as posters denouncing Bezos have already filled the city.
One of them reads, “Bezos Met Gala. Brought to you by worker exploitation,” and shows what appears to be a bottle of urine on the red carpet, a reference to claims that Amazon delivery drivers are so pressured to be on time that they don’t have time to get out of their trucks to relieve themselves.
Chris Smalls, former president of the Amazon workers union, said of Bezos’ rant at the gala: “It’s a bad look. It’s no surprise. We’re really talking about a disconnect from humanity.” “Just a few blocks away, there are people struggling to survive, including Mr. Bezos’ own employees. Tens of thousands of them are living on government food stamps, and some are without housing.” (Amazon is currently fighting a legal ruling that would have required it to engage with unions.)
Still, cultural institutions like the Metropolitan Museum of Art need cash like Bezos’s to keep them afloat.
“I understand the realities of maintaining something like a costume center,” Winston Wolkoff said. “But the question is, how do we continue to evolve without losing the essence of what made[the Met Gala]so iconic in the first place?
“When that line starts to blur, the entire perception of the brand changes.”
Meanwhile, the biggest question is what Sanchez Bezos will wear on Monday night.
Fashion insiders say there’s one person who has the answers. “If you know Anna, she’ll know what Lauren is wearing.”
