Celebrities like Zendaya are boycotting the Met Gala – but it’s the wrong move, writes Victoria Richards. Nothing can be achieved by erasure, she argues. A protest works because it says the quiet parts out loud – and some of the best protests are to be found in iconic fashion.
It’s not the first time Jeff Bezos has faced a boycott – last summer a mannequin floated in Venice canal in a protest against his wedding.
Two weeks ago, I took my teenage daughter to her first film premiere – note, I did not get to do this as a child. Kids these days, etc! – and we walked the red carpet for The Devil Wears Prada 2. After gawking at the outfits, the decades-defying frozen foreheads, and Donatella Versace, we found ourselves jostling for space alongside people with Turkey teeth white enough to show us the way when the house lights went down. My 14-year-old informed me that we were sitting next to a bunch of Love Islanders and a girl from Instagram with a million followers. Life has never felt so unseriously glam – especially when Meryl Streep and her co-stars came out for a five-minute wave before the film (which can be summed up as “fine”) began. The glitz of it kept us buzzing for a full fortnight.
Until now. After two weeks of news which has included ramped up stresses in the Strait of Hormuz, King Charles’ rictus grin in the White House as he sought to smooth the so-called “special relationship” with Trump, the global price of oil sky-rocketing, continued violence in the Middle East and Ukraine, a couple of mass shootings, a stabbing in the Jewish community and an upping of the terror threat in London (our home city) to “severe” plus a new and deadly viral outbreak on a cruise ship, we really, really, really needed the soothing glamour of Anna Wintour’s annual Met Gala fashion fundraiser. We need it for the same reasons we “needed” – and yes, I use the word lightly – that film premiere: because when life is... well, a bit s**t, then the one thing us “normies” can look forward to is famous people doing something daring with fashion.
Sadly, it looks like we’re not going to get that, because the A-listers are boycotting it altogether, due to the Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos’ involvement as lead sponsor. And I am, for one, gutted. Apparently, we won’t see Zendaya on the red carpet tonight (she was the main draw last year, in an incredible Louis Vuitton white suit) and nor will we see Meryl, who is rumoured to have turned down a Met Gala co-chair role, because of Bezos. (Her spokesperson told The Independent: “Meryl has been invited to the Met Gala for many years but has never attended. While she appreciates Vogue, Anna, and her incredible imagination and stamina, it has never quite been her scene.”). I’m sure the presence of Bezos and his wife, Lauren Sánchez, makes it even less Meryl’s “scene”, and certainly, Bezos’s sponsorship of the Gala has sparked major backlash from critics who have accused him of “buying influence” at such a prestigious event. As lead donors, the couple seemingly get a say in everything from invites to the overall presentation of the Met Gala itself.
Unsurprisingly, protest posters have appeared in New York this week, bearing the slogans “Bezos Met Gala: Brought to you by the firm that powers ICE” and “Boycott the Bezos Met Gala”. One poster adds: “The Bezos Met Gala: Brought to you by worker exploitation,” referring to alleged worker mistreatment at Amazon order fulfilment centres, and is reportedly the work of the British political activist and “anti-billionaire” group Everyone Hates Elon.
It’s not that I have any sympathy in the slightest for Bezos: I’ve boycotted Amazon myself this year (as well as Zuckerberg-owned Instagram and other social media). I find the way he’s effectively buying his way into everything in our lives – from our doorsteps to our petty, precious entertainments – pretty grotesque. He and Sánchez’s involvement with this year’s Met Gala can, and should, make us take a long, hard look at ourselves, but hey, we can do that on our own time.
Yet I don’t want A-listers to absent themselves from the whole thing – do you? 2026 is fast becoming the year of the boycott, and no good can come of it. Over here, our politicians are considering stopping pro-Palestinian marches because of fears of antisemitism, but it’s only the latest move in a long line of reductions of our democratic freedoms. And that’s exactly why we need celebrities like Zendaya and Meryl to use their fame and status to make these points for the rest of us. I don’t think we should be removing ourselves to leave an absence; we should be taking up space to call out injustice – and show integrity through action.
A protest is a protest because it says the quiet parts out loud, and clothing has long been a symbol of protest, from the suffragette colours to the black berets of the Black Panthers. And so, when it comes to the Met Gala, what better way to inspire a younger generation – and to highlight dissatisfaction with Jeff Bezos – than going to the world’s biggest fashion event and calling out the billionaires, right in front of their faces? After all, what’s interesting to me is that the theme of this year’s Met Gala is “Costume Art,” to apparently explore the “centrality of the dressed body” through depictions and interpretations of the human form in the Met museum’s collection. The dress code is said to encourage guests to think about how they can use their bodies as a “blank canvas”.
In which case, don’t boycott the Met Gala, Zendaya and co. Do the opposite: air your views in front of the paparazzi. Wear those same anti-Bezos or anti-ICE or anti-billionaire slogans on your bodies. Showcase them scrawled across a T-shirt; emblazon them across your Dior-clad chests. Autograph them on flyers and scatter them like confetti. Ensure the entire world is watching. We need you to make a fuss on our behalf and make a statement on the red carpet, which is exactly where you belong.
