The Devil Wears Amazon

On the first Monday each May, New York hosts Hollywood’s brightest stars and fashion’s famed designers for a night in aid of the Metropolitan Museum’s Costume Institute. It’s also a night to be seen on the most-watched red carpet, not simply for visibility, but for cultural validation. Attendance at the Met Gala has long functioned as an unofficial ranking system, signalling who sits within fashion’s upper tier of taste and relevance, while also delivering some of the highest-performing social media moments of the year for those invited. 

Historically, luxury houses would buy tables and use them to host and dress actors, musicians and emerging muses – a move championed by Anna Wintour, who understood the power of celebrity and virality as early as the 2000s. While it’s been critiqued as an increasingly out-of-touch display of extreme wealth by many in recent years, even at its most indulgent, the Met Gala could justify its excess: it was funding the preservation of fashion history at one of the world’s most prestigious institutions.

This year, the announcement of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and wife Lauren Sánchez as the gala’s sponsors and honorary chairs has effectively punctured the illusion the Met Gala trades on, but dragging the industry’s real power dynamics into plain view. What once positioned itself as a celebration of taste now reads far more bluntly as a marketplace for influence, where access is no longer earned through cultural contribution but secured through capital. Bezos and Sánchez are not arbiters of taste. They are not patrons of craft, nor contributors to fashion’s cultural lineage. What they represent is capital at a scale that doesn’t need to develop taste; turns out, you can buy your way in, so long as you’re entering from the top. 

Bezos and Sánchez are not arbiters of taste. They are not patrons of craft, nor contributors to fashion’s cultural lineage. What they represent is capital at a scale that doesn’t need to develop taste; turns out, you can buy your way in, so long as you’re entering from the top. 

Despite their attempts to weasel their way into fashion’s upper echelons – from being personally ushered through couture week by Wintour to persistent whispers of Bezos’ secret investments across media and luxury – much of the industry has been reluctant to fully embrace the duo, and with a plethora of good reasons. Bezos’ wealth is inseparable from the conditions that built it: Amazon’s long-documented labour practices, from workers forced into punishing productivity targets to reports of employees urinating in bottles to meet quotas, sit in direct opposition to the artisanal labour and human craft the Gala claims to celebrate. His political positioning (including proximity to Donald Trump-era policies and contracts linked to ICE infrastructure) only adds to that contradiction. Fashion is not unaware of this; it is choosing to look past it. In doing so, it exposes a willingness to absorb almost any figure, no matter how misaligned with its stated values, so long as their purse strings are large enough.

This weekend, I went to the cinema to watch The Devil Wears Prada 2, [excited for the looks and curious to see how the film tackled fashion media’s ever-changing landscape and expectations.] In the movie, Emily Blunt’s Emily Charlton has moved away from the publishing industry to an executive position at Dior (spoilers ahead). [would like to add more commentary/critique of the film here – whole thing felt like a massive advert, relied very heavily on nostalgia and featured just about every designer, celebrity and influencer cameo in America but rarely made good use of them] As Andy tries to once again save Miranda and Runway from impending ruin, Emily follows her own ambition, and uses her new, billionaire tech boyfriend to buy the magazine for herself. This was the film’s most engaging commentary on the industry, however, the film failed to make any statement on the observation and what this means for fashion. Instead, the moment was played out as exaggerated industry satire – but it’s not satirical at all, it’s frighteningly true to life. 

This is not the first time billionaires and tech companies have sponsored the Met Gala – since 2014, the event’s backers have included Aerin, Yahoo, Apple, Instagram and TikTok. But those were corporate alignments; abstract, at least on the surface. What is happening now is more explicit. For the first time, a private individual has emerged as a lead sponsor, with Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez reportedly contributing $10 million and positioning themselves at the centre of the event as honorary co-chairs. 

At the same time, companies like Meta, OpenAI, Amazon, Snapchat and a growing roster of tech platforms are buying their way into the room, snapping up tables that now cost upwards of hundreds of thousands for the night. These are the same corporations that have spent the past decade dismantling the very structures that once sustained fashion’s ecosystem: from magazines to department stores to the broader frameworks of authorship and editorial authority. If you can’t build taste, you can buy proximity to the people who define it. And the industry, rather than resisting, is accommodating: absorbing these players into its most visible cultural stage, even as their influence continues to erode the foundations it was built on.

Wintour’s version of the Met was rigid, often exclusionary, and frequently criticised, but it was also disciplined. Access was tightly controlled, and however imperfect the system, it maintained a link (however tenuous) between invitation and cultural contribution.

This all coincides with the departure of Anna Wintour, fashion’s supreme gatekeeper, whose control over the Gala has defined it for decades. Wintour’s version of the Met was rigid, often exclusionary, and frequently criticised, but it was also disciplined. Access was tightly controlled, and however imperfect the system, it maintained a link (however tenuous) between invitation and cultural contribution. Her move from American Vogue to Condé Nast’s global Head of Content initially felt like a simple title shift, but as her distance from the Gala becomes more pronounced, it’s harder not to question what replaces that level of editorial control.

For a generation entering the industry, myself included, the decline of that old vanguard once felt overdue. The grip on fashion’s inner circles was tight, and the promise of something more open, and more reflective of the people actually shaping culture felt necessary. But what’s replaced it is not a democratised system, it’s a more permeable one. Without a singular arbiter of taste, the Gala has become just another room to buy into, and in the absence of strong editorial control, capital isn’t just entering the room; it’s running it. The terms of entry are being rewritten by those with the most money and the least cultural stake in what fashion is supposed to represent. The red carpet now operates as a distribution channel: for brands, for partnerships, for carefully managed images engineered to perform across platforms. The clothes are still there, but they are no longer the point. 

Even the industry’s own cultural outputs are beginning to mirror this shift. The Devil Wears Prada 2 gestures towards critique but ultimately functions as a fully integrated brand environment, packed with cameos and partnerships that leave little room for interrogation. The Met Gala is starting to operate within that same logic. Under Anna Wintour, fashion maintained the illusion (and, at times, the reality) that it set the terms, that proximity to it was earned. That hierarchy is now slipping. The scale of brand integration, across both film and fashion’s biggest night, suggests an industry no longer confident in its own value without external underwriting. This doesn’t read as evolution; it reads as need.

Outside the museum, the general public is not watching quietly. In the weeks leading up to the Gala, New York has been papered with posters reading “Boycott the Bezos Met Ball: Brought to you by worker exploitation,” alongside mock campaigns highlighting Amazon’s links to ICE. Activist group Everyone Hates Elon has led much of the visual disruption, but they are not acting alone. Labour organisations, including the Service Employees International Union and the Amazon Labour Union, have organised a counter-event – a “Ball Without Billionaires” – where workers from Amazon, Uber and Starbucks will walk as models in garments by ethically-minded designers.

This resistance is not only taking place on the streets. New York mayor Zohran Mamdani has broken with tradition to skip the event entirely, citing his focus on affordability in one of the world’s most expensive cities. High-profile regulars are reportedly absent: Zendaya, whose appearances typically dominate online Gala coverage, is expected to sit this year out, while even The Devil Wears Prada 2 star Meryl Streep will be notably absent from the staircase. Whether directly tied to sponsorship or not, the cumulative effect is the same: the event’s centre of gravity is shifting.

Prestige is an ephemeral beast, and what’s lost cannot be bought back. 

This sits within a longer pattern of friction between the Gala and the world outside it, from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s “Tax the Rich” dress in 2021 to last year’s pro-Palestine protests attempting to block arrivals. But the tone has hardened, and is no longer symbolic or easily absorbed into the spectacle. It is targeted, materially grounded, and explicitly names the systems (labour, tech, capital) that underpin the night itself.

What remains to be seen is whether any of that tension breaches the carpet, or whether, once again, it is contained neatly outside the frame. Will I still be checking my phone tonight to see what Beyoncé rocks up in, or logging on tomorrow morning to see Matthieu Blazy’s first Met Gala outing at Chanel? Sure, but the vibe has shifted for good. Prestige is an ephemeral beast, and what’s lost cannot be bought back. 

Enjoyed this story? Help keep independent queer-led publishing alive and unlock the BRICKS Learner Platform, full of resources for emerging and aspiring creatives sent to you every week via newsletter. Start your 30-day free trial now.

The post The Devil Wears Amazon appeared first on BRICKS Magazine.