Erewhon, a hospice day, and a first Met Gala press appearance are linked by feelings of sadness, strangeness, dullness, and expense. The 2026 Met Gala, themed “Fashion Is Art,” is staged to celebrate the “Costume Art” exhibition in the museum’s new Condé M. Nast Galleries. The presentation examines the centrality of the dressed body through juxtapositions of garments and artworks from the museum’s collections. Both the show and the party receive about $10 million in subsidies from Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez Bezos. The event is hosted in a temporary corridor along Fifth Avenue, with celebrities and media figures gathering near the grand steps.
"This year's event was staged to celebrate the "Costume Art" exhibition in the Met's new Condé M. Nast Galleries, located in the museum's former gift shop. The presentation, which "[examines] the centrality of the dressed body," per the press release, features sundry juxtapositions of garments and artworks culled from the Met's magnificent stores. Both the show and the party were largely subsidized by American oligarch Jeff Bezos and his consigliere/wife, Lauren Sánchez Bezos, to the tune of about $10 million: tax-deductible jelly-jar change to a couple who spent $500 million on a 417-foot "superyacht" that costs roughly $25 million annually to maintain."
"Within a temporary corridor built along Fifth Avenue, where all the stars would line up to get inside the soiree, I witnessed a menagerie of grifters and A-listers waft in. Among them were Ms. Sánchez Bezos (whose surgically enhanced rictus eerily resembles Amazon's smugly smirking arrow logo) and her fellow Blue Origin bobbleheads Katy Perry and Gayle King; the gala's longtime master of ceremonies, Anna Wintour; newly right-wing Google cofounder and Little Saint James (aka Epstein Island) visitor Sergey Brin; various noxious strains of Kardashian/Jenner; and a murder of Murdochs."
"SAD, STRANGE, DULL, EXPENSIVE-these are the words that immediately came to mind when I first walked through an Erewhon. They also describe the day that I spent with my dad in hospice almost sixteen years ago, holding his dirty and frail hand as I worried about how my soon-to-be-widowed mother would pay for his funeral and medical expenses. And finally, they summarize what I felt about my inaugural press turn at the 2026 Met Gala in New York, the theme of which was "Fashion Is Art.""
Read at Artforum
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