Tonight's MET Gala is the most controversial yet
It's Been a Minute
NPR
4.7 • 9.2K Ratings
🗓️ 4 May 2026
⏱️ 18 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
That's because Anna Wintour has been buddying up with a certain billionaire, Jeff Bezos, and his wife, Lauren Sánchez Bezos. The couple are the lead sponsors of this year's gala. To be clear, the wealthiest people have always been involved with fashion's biggest night, but this year some folks feels its more in the spotlight - at a time when many Americans feel like life is getting more and more unaffordable.
Brittany is joined by culture critic Marjon Carlos and culture writer Shelton Boyd-Griffith to lay out the stakes of this year's MET Gala - from the billionaires to the best dressed.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Tonight is fashion's biggest night, the Met Gala. The Costume Institute's spring |
| 0:06.5 | 26 exhibition is costume art, and the gala's dress code is quote, fashion is art, inviting guests |
| 0:14.1 | to express their own relationship to fashion as an embodied art form and celebrate the countless |
| 0:19.5 | depictions of the dressed body throughout art |
| 0:22.2 | history. End quote. But the sponsor of this year's gala has a lot of people raising eyebrows |
| 0:28.2 | and picket signs. Jeff Bezos and his wife, Lauren Sanchez Bezos, are the lead sponsors |
| 0:35.3 | and honorary chairs of this year's MetGala. |
| 0:38.2 | Now, they aren't the first or the last billionaires that have attended a MetGala, but |
| 0:42.9 | with concerns about Amazon's labor practices, including the dismissal of immigrants working |
| 0:47.8 | legally in their warehouses, and the widening gap between the haves and the have-nots, people |
| 0:53.8 | aren't too happy about their participation in such a large cultural event. |
| 0:58.2 | But who, if not the Rockefellers and Carnegie's of our modern time, can fund the arts? |
| 1:03.1 | And what does that mean for our culture at large? |
| 1:06.6 | To answer that question, I'm joined by culture writer Shelton Boyd Griffith. |
| 1:10.3 | Thank you for having me. |
| 1:11.6 | And Marjohn Carlos, cultural critic and podcast host. |
| 1:15.1 | Thank you. |
| 1:16.2 | To get into how fashion's biggest night has become a boilerplate for issues surrounding power, influence, and body politics. |
| 1:26.6 | Hello, hello. I'm Brittany Luce, and you're listening to It's Been a Minute from NPR, a show about what's going on in culture and why it doesn't happen by accident. |
| 1:43.4 | Let's talk a little bit about some of the forces and factors at play in this year's |
| 1:47.3 | MacGala. |
| 1:48.0 | And why I think that even for people who are not interested in fashion and don't follow |
... |
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