The tech bros were out in force, certain A-listers sat it out and Jeff Bezos foot the bill. With a recipe like that, it seemed this year’s Met Gala would be usurped by Silicon Valley.
In many ways, it was. AI-generated deepfakes garnered millions of views (no, Anna Wintour did not don a Mona Lisa dress), reporters sported Meta glasses, and Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez Bezos were honorary co-chairs. Monday night’s event is even being called the “Tech Gala” in certain circles, as public dissent around Big Tech’s involvement grabbed as many headlines as the most eccentric celebrity looks.
Apart from the involvement of the Amazon founder, tech companies from OpenAI to Snapchat bought nearly as many tables as major fashion houses, raising a record $42 million for the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute. Forbes deemed the gala a “cultural Turing Test,” suggesting that who “passed through the narrowest gate in media” was not only a matter of visibility, but now verifiability. The tech bros, per their invitations, have now been embraced as cultural insiders.
Lest we forget, the fundraiser is tied to the opening of the Costume Institute’s spring exhibition, “Costume Art,” which “explores depictions of the dressed body” through garments and artifacts spanning some 5,000 years. Curator Andrew Bolton chose to explore fashion as an embodied art form through 13 thematic body types, citing the way the body is “under attack from different places — first and foremost from artificial intelligence” as a source of inspiration. Bolton was also behind the 2016 Met Gala exhibit “Manus x Machina: Fashion in an Age of Technology,” so it stands to reason this earlier foray into the tech sphere informed this radically inclusive, human-centric exhibition a decade later.
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Regardless of whether celebs stuck to the “Fashion Is Art” dress code, fashion’s biggest night deliveredGiven the tech exec attendees and current obsession with AI, I expected more looks to buck the given theme of “Fashion Is Art” and instead investigate the tension between man and machine. SpreeAI CEO John Imah made a go of it with gold-encrusted circuitry as a physical embodiment of his startup, and Janelle Monae’s mossy electrical wires made a case for nature’s eventual dominance, but there weren’t many other sartorial statements aligning with the so-called Tech Gala.
Instead, designers overwhelmingly leaned into the anatomical form, and, in turn, tactile artisan techniques that are inseparable from human creativity and skill. Vogue noted that the evening was stylistically all about the hand — ironic, as hands are the very thing AI has the most trouble generating. Despite the event’s Silicon Valley incursion, there was an outpouring of fashion reliant on human intention separate from technological automation.
Miles Chamley-Watson couldn’t have collaborated with a better designer to put together this literal take on “Fashion Is Art.” Brooklyn-based KidSuper (real name: Colm Dillane) created original paintings which were then turned into a custom jacquard fabric that was used for the suit; in a true flourish, he used the same technique to produce a giant rug, which was then cut into a custom jacket.
Wisdom Kaye’s Public School ensemble was an inventive take on the theme, upcycled from vintage Italian suiting, workwear and materials sourced directly from eBay. The funky anatomical proportions of this silhouette aren’t something you see every day, which is precisely the point of the Met Gala. His look platformed sustainable design in a high-fashion space — as an avid sourcer of vintage clothing, I’m all for it.
I would be remiss not to mention Jeremy Pope’s incredible archival Vivienne Westwood corseted jacket from the late designer’s fall 1996 collection. By choosing a statement piece that’s defined by meticulous craftsmanship — thousands of hand-sewn pearl beads, sequins and jewels — he didn’t simply make countless best-dressed lists, he also made a statement to the tech overlords: your AI models can’t do this.
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