Fashion Art Resistance at the Met Gala

This year’s Met Gala has attracted both praise and hostility, and both perspectives warrant a place within the broader conversation surrounding art, power, and influence. We can admire the artistry while still questioning the systems around it.

Historically, The Costume Institute has been denied the security of endowment support since merging with The Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1946. This exclusion was shaped by misogynistic attitudes that dismissed fashion as merely a “woman’s interest” rather than a legitimate fine art. To this day, The Costume Institute remains the only self-funded curatorial department within The Met. However, decades of advocacy by designers, editors, curators, and artists, has evolved it into one of the museum’s most financially successful divisions, with this year’s gala raising a record-breaking $42 million.

At its core, The Met Gala has always stood for supporting the arts, legitimising female dominated industries, and solidifying fashion and costume as a respected art form. That said, the 2026 event faced major backlash, with tensions more intensified than ever following the appointment of billionaire tech mogul Jeff Bezos as honorary chairman and financial sponsor. While the Met Gala has long faced criticism for elitism, Bezos’ involvement has come to symbolise a visible shift in cultural power from patrons of the arts to corporate oligarchs. It is apparent that the appointment of Jeff Bezos contradicts the institution's ethos, but what many critics have overlooked was the numerous attempts made by creatives to reinforce said ethos and reclaim the event through fashion artistry.

One striking example was the look titled The One Percent by cult label Matières Fécales, worn by actress Sarah Paulson. Paulson appeared in the “Destroyed Tulle Debutante Gown” paired with the “Blinded by Money” leather mask from the label’s FW26 couture collection, a direct critique of ‘greed and the corruption associated with extreme wealth and power’.

Many online commentators criticised the perceived hypocrisy of an anti-elite statement being delivered by a wealthy celebrity. Yet wealth and visibility do not inherently constitute moral failure. What matters is how influence is exercised - does it reinforce systems of exploitation? Or does it amplify critical discourse and artistic expression?

Bezos has faced numerous allegations surrounding union suppression, worker exploitation, and political influence, including the suppression of free speech and editorial independence. Meanwhile, figures such as Paulson have used their visibility to amplify the work and messages of artists who might otherwise lack access to a global platform of this scale. 

If fashion is the painting, then Paulson is merely the frame. The critique itself belongs to the designers.

Fashion history repeatedly demonstrates that clothing is inherently political. Dress has long functioned as protest, resistance, propaganda and social commentary. Its ability to influence cultural consciousness is exactly why fashion must be regarded as an art form, and why The Costume Institute and the Met Gala exist in the first place.

Other celebrities, including Meryl Streep, Olivia Rodrigo, Bella Hadid, and Mark Ruffalo, have allegedly signalled their disapproval of the Gala’s leadership through their absence from the event and their engagement with social media critiques surrounding it. Such actions can effectively communicate our dissent and place pressure on those who grant Bezos’s influence within this cultural institution. While boycotting the event certainly has its merits and uses, I do not believe it offers a sustainable long-term solution. It risks overshadowing the labour of the people whom the event was formed to support. The creatives - those whose craftsmanship and mastery of their respected art forms sustain the industry itself, are paying the price.

Ultimately, the future of the Met Gala should not be dictated by billionaires with little connection to the inner workings of the fashion industry. The growth and preservation of fashion culture will not be achieved through monopolies of power, but through the collective voices of the artists, designers, ateliers, historians, and craftspeople who give the event its meaning. So perhaps the answer is not to abandon these spaces entirely, but to reclaim them - to re-centre the voices that deserve to be heard, so that fashion may continue to function as a powerful form of protest, resistance, and social commentary.