Editor’s note: This article has been amended to clarify a quote attribution.
(NewsNation) — I’m told by several ladies in NYC’s social set that, despite being given the “honor” of being asked to be part of the Gala Committee (for which they would have had to sign a $100,000 check), they declined.
“It just didn’t seem the thing to do,” one socialite sniffed at the Frederick Law Olmstead Awards for Central Park Conservatory Luncheon on Wednesday.
NYC elite avoid the Met Gala
“(The Gala has) just become something other than what it used to be. So many celebrities, and no one knows anything about fashion or the museum or why they’re there except to be photographed. It’s now just a bad competition for oneupsmanship.”
More social types, who attended Gillian Hearst’s birthday party at TSquared Social last week (all of whom think nothing of dropping $100,000 a ticket or $375,000 for a table), echoed the same sentiment.
As another said it more succinctly: “(The Gala) has just become so tacky.”
Nicole Kidman, Lauren Sánchez Bezos and Anna Wintour attend the 2026 Met Gala celebrating “Costume Art” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 04, 2026 in New York City. (Photo by Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images)
US television personality Kris Jenner arrives for the 2026 Met Gala celebrating “Costume Art” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in New York, on May 4, 2026. (Photo by Angela Weiss / AFP via Getty Images)
Zoe Kravitz arrives at The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute benefit gala celebrating the opening of the “Costume Art” exhibition on Monday, May 4, 2026, in New York. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP)
Connor Storrie arrives at The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute benefit gala celebrating the opening of the “Costume Art” exhibition on Monday, May 4, 2026, in New York. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP)
Hudson Williams arrives at The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute benefit gala celebrating the opening of the “Costume Art” exhibition on Monday, May 4, 2026, in New York. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP)
Cher arrives at The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute benefit gala celebrating the opening of the “Costume Art” exhibition on Monday, May 4, 2026, in New York. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP)
And while the event did raise a record $42 million for the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute, most of the money came from the “tech-bro” crowd, like Bezos, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, Snapchat’s founder Evan Spiegel, Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri, Google cofounder Sergey Brin and OpenAI’s head of partnerships, Charles Porch.
Met Gala ‘has turned into the VMA’s’
“It’s not even this year,” another wealthy woman said. “The past few years, the Gala has turned into the VMA’s.”
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“In search for money and her own clout, Anna (Wintour) has turned the Gala into a corporate event that no one wants to go to except some low-brow celebrities and tech bros. No, thank you,” an insider said about the annual event.
“Not since the Gilded Age era of Vanderbilts et al have we seen such monarchistic efforts of the rich to get over their way. Very Bertha Russell reminiscent in the Gilded Age (HBO) if you’ve been watching that show,” former Vogue editor and society chronicler, William Norwich, said on Instagram. “The conflict between art and money goes back to the Medicis, and it won’t end with the Bezoses or corporations like LVMH and Philip Morris. How artists and philanthropic institutions such as the Met deal and negotiate that tension is its own kind of art form.”
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