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Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez Bezos paid at least $10 million to sponsor the Met Gala Monday night, Page Six can reveal.
This puts the billionaire couple, who will sit with close pals including Kris Jenner at the party, 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 Wintour herself — the former Vogue editor who uses the starry annual event to raise money for the Anna Wintour Costume Center at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
“The Bezoses are where the American dream is at right now for status, wealth and style,” former Vogue editor William Norwich told Page Six. “They display conspicuous consumption [and] they have the ‘AWOK’ — the Anna Wintour OK.”
But for many in the fashion crowd, Wintour’s courting of America’s new “bizarro” royalty — as one insider dubbed the Bezoses — who this week celebrated Britain’s King Charles and Queen Camilla at a state dinner at the White House, where Sanchez Bezoz wore 200 carats of emeralds – goes against what the Met Gala stands for.
“I’m heartbroken,” admitted a frequent Met Gala guest and fashion insider. “It’s being able to buy yourself into [the good graces of] Anna and the Met.”
Sánchez Bezos, 56, famously got the Wintour seal of approval last June when she appeared on a digital cover of Vogue to publicize her lavish Venetian nuptials with the world’s third richest man, with wedding guests including Kim Kardashian, Oprah Winfrey and Leonardo Di Caprio. There were even rumors that Wintour helped pick the bride’s Dolce & Gabbana gown, although sources close to the couple sniffed at this.
“For me, it’s not just about the gala, it reflects a broader shift in the world we’re living in,” said Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, the former Vogue special events planner who famously ran the ball for over a decade and is often referred to as its mastermind. “There was a time when access to spaces like the Met Gala, or even the pages of Vogue, wasn’t something you could simply obtain, it was something you grew into through your influence, your work and your impact. It carried a sense of prestige that felt earned, not transactional.
“The gala has evolved,” added Winston Wolkoff, who wrote a best-seller, “Melania & Me: The Rise and Fall of My Friendship With The First Lady”, about her time working at the White House. “And, in many ways, it’s become something different. It used to be a true celebration of designers, their muses and the artistry behind fashion. Every person on that carpet felt intentional, like they were part of a larger narrative.
“That sense of purpose feels less defined now.”
Wintour’s eyes, it seem, are on the bottom line: Last year, she raised $31 million, the biggest gross in the event’s 77-year history.
Norwich said that 76-year-old Wintour — who remains Chief Content Officer for Condé Nast and Global Editorial Director of Vogue after handing over the day-to-day reins of the fashion bible to Chloe Malle earlier this year — would have first approached the Bezoses about financing the gala at least two years ago, which the fashion insider agreed with. Despite this, other sources told us Wintour reached out after the Bezos wedding to make the request.
As of April, Bloomberg estimated Bezos’ fortune at between $230 billion to $241 billion. He remains the executive chairman of the company he launched as an online bookstore in his garage in Bellevue, Washington, back in 1995.
Sources told Page Six that Bezos paid at least $10 million to sponsor the ball, which this year has the theme of “Costume Art” and has the Bezos name plastered all over the invites. In fact, it could well be up to $20 million, said another source in the know.
We have reached out to reps for the Bezoses and the Metropolitan Museum for comment.
Funnily enough, when Bezos, 62, first sponsored the gala in 2012 via Amazon, with Wintour giving him fashion advice ahead of the event, no one blinked an eye, said fashion writer Amy Odell. But back then, he didn’t have his va-va-voom bride on his arm.
And despite the “snobbery” of many in the fashion world, the sheer power and authority of the couple cannot be ignored. Indeed, they are VICs — Very important Clients, in fashion parlance.
“They are part of the two% of fashion buyers who represent 40% of luxury sales,” said Odell. “And fashion has reorganized around to catering to this group. Lauren is the archetype of this clientele. She’s trying to make it OK again to flaunt your material excess … a lot of rich people would like to do that.”
Sánchez Bezos last month told the New York Times she was “super proud” of the figure-hugging white Alexander McQueen white pantsuit she wore to Donald Trump’s inauguration in January 2025, where her lacy bra was exposed to the cameras. But she was also aware of the public criticism that followed.
“I get it,” she told the outlet. “No lace at the White House. Noted.”
“They want to be on Instagram showing off their jewels, gowns and couture,” continued Odell, “And some in the industry want to embrace this from a business perspective: You can buy stuff and show it off.”
That said, she added, “Fashion is a lefty industry, however, and a lot of people do not like to see them involved.”
As Page Six Hollywood reported this week, frequent Met Gala attendee and Moda Operandi entrepreneur Lauren Santo Domingo will be skipping the ball and a number of top designers also won’t be there, including Nicolas Ghesquière of Louis Vuitton and JW Anderson’s Jonathan Anderson.
Oscar winner Meryl Streep, who plays the fictionalized version of Wintour in “The Devil Wears Prada” movies, also declined a request to co-chair. A source told us this had nothing to do with Bezos. “Meryl has been invited to the Met Gala for many years but has never attended. While she appreciates Vogue and Anna and her incredible imagination and stamina, it has never quite been her scene,” said her rep.
As another fashion source said: “The Met’s been an elitist party for as long as it’s been around. Anna puts a lot of pressure of herself to beat the year before, but that’s not on Lauren and Jeff.”
Even though Wintour could sell more tickets and more chairs, she likes to keep it exclusive, said Odell.
Individual tickets for 2026 cost $100,000, up from $75,000 last year. Table prices, at $350,000, are unchanged from 2025.
For the past few years, Wintour has courted Big Tech’s biggest players who, in turn, have been keen to buy tables and influence.
In her “Back Row” newsletter, Odell wrote that tech execs know “there’s serious money to be made in being seen as a platform for the kind of fashion influence that, 25 years ago, couldn’t be bought and sold at the Met Gala or anywhere else. All of these businesses need female adoption.”
This year’s table buyers include OpenAI, Meta and Snapchat. Additionally, we are told that Meta billionaire Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla, will attend the gala for the very first time.
“Could all these tech billionaires be having a midlife makeover?” laughed Odell.
Bezos himself has had a phenomenal one. For early Amazon exec Jeff Rossman, Bezos’s appearance at the Met Gala is at odds with the “slightly nerdy” guy he once knew, who dressed in “cheap businessman attire” of blue buttondowns and khakis.
However, “he was always interested in the business of fashion,” said Rossman, “Even though he didn’t personally display fashion sense, He wanted Amazon to get into the fashion business. At one point we had the concept of Amazon Black, this fashion site. He really wanted us to be able to sell apparel.”
Since his 2019 divorce from first wife Mackenzie Scott, Bezos — especially under his second wife’s guidance — has undergone a musclebound makeover and often favors form-fitting shirts and boldly colored jackets.
“It’s inspiring how fit he has become,” said Rossman, who wrote “The Amazon Way” and other books. “It’s taken decades, but he’s an example of how if you want to do something, you can.”
But, Rossman added: “I get the the sense his life is much more about him and Lauren than Amazon at this point…I don’t fully understand what his personal branding is.”
Bezos’ pricey Met Gala involvement also comes with another cost, as protesters are planning to flock outside the event and have already daubed the city with posters raging against him.
One reads, “The Bezos Met Gala. Brought to you by worker exploitation” and shows what appears to be a bottle of urine on a red carpet — a reference to claims that Amazon delivery drivers are so pressured to stay on schedule that they don’t have time to leave their trucks to relieve themselves.
“It’s a bad look. It’s a no-brainer — you’re really talking about a disconnect from humanity,” said Chris Smalls, the former President of the Amazon Labour Union, of Bezos splashing out on the gala. “There are people just a few blocks away who are struggling so survive, including Bezos’ own workers. Tens of thousands of them are living off government food stamps, some without housing.” (Amazon is now fighting against a legal ruling that it has to engage with the union.)
Still, cash of the kind Bezos has is needed to keep a cultural institution like the Met going.
“I understand the realities of sustaining something like the Costume Center,” said Winston Wolkoff. “But the question becomes, how do you 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, it changes the perception of the brand as a whole.”
The big question, meanwhile, is what will Sánchez Bezos wear Monday night?
The fashion insider said there is one person who has the answer: “Knowing Anna, she’s going to find out what Lauren is wearing.”
English (US)