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Actress Sarah Paulson stepped onto the Met Gala carpet on the traditional first Monday of May wearing an oversized U.S. dollar eye mask with holes poked into it so she could see if we got her tone-deaf smoke signal. As cult-favorite designer Matières Fécales described it on Instagram: “She is wearing the ‘Blinded by Money’ leather mask and the Destroyed Tulle Debutante Ballgown … A reflection of the greed and corruption that comes with extreme power.”
So, whose greed and corrupt power was being reflected? Paulson’s? Was she blinded by her own oversized dollar? Let’s just say, the message didn’t quite have the intended effect.
“The only way to deliver this statement earnestly would be by not going,” posted one commenter about Paulson’s rebellion against an event she probably had marked on her calendar for a year and paid $100,000 to attend.
“This is literally the Capitol from ‘The Hunger Games,’” posted one Instagram user, with others suggesting a guillotine might have added that special something.
Angela Weiss / AFP via Getty Images
Paulson wasn’t the richest person in the room. (That was probably honorary chairman Jeff Bezos, who donated $10 million to the cause from his $282 billion coffers.) Maybe the actor was just throwing a tantrum about her own measly $12 million net worth. Showing up in an $8,000 look from a designer whose name translates to “fecal matter” sure set the tone for the rest of the night, as matière fécale hit the fan in style.
With a few friends or a corporate card, you could reserve a table for $350,000. Maybe fashion houses used to pick up that kind of tab during the Gala’s golden era, but in 2026, with Amazon, Spotify, Meta, OpenAI, and Snapchat shelling out for the best seats, the Met Gala bested last year’s $31 million haul, raking in a record $42 million.
Clearly, bottles of fake “urine” hidden inside the Metropolitan Museum of Art ahead of the event, alerting Met staffers to the alleged working conditions of Amazon delivery drivers, where workers are forced to use empty water bottles in lieu of breaks, did nothing to sway revelers.
As stunt perpetrator Everyone Hates Elon posted to Instagram, “Jeff Bezos’ company Amazon is literally being sued for forcing workers to urinate in bottles. Amazon avoids MILLIONS in tax and Bezos is one of the world’s richest men. The Met Museum is taking the P*SS by having Jeff honored as their Gala host.”
Moving on from bathroom topics, the dress code for the night was “Fashion As Art,” which was interpreted like a game of telephone where nothing made sense by the end. Some seemingly tried to pull off tributes to actual works of fine art (Apologies to Georges Seurat, Jackson Pollock, Gustav Klimt, et al.), but others took inspiration from left field.
Bad Bunny transformed into a wrinkly, sun-spotted elderly man with a cane. Cardi B arrived in an awkwardly lumpy Marc Jacobs look; she should probably get checked out by a doctor. Lena Dunham looked as “Famesick” as her latest memoir in blood-red, feathered Valentino.
Simulated nudity was “art” for everyone from Kendall and Kylie Jenner, whose matching bodices boasted prosthetic nipples, to Kim Kardashian in an orange fembot look and Hailey Bieber with a gilded torso. Naked-look dresses were strategically worn by Gigi Hadid, Zoë Kravitz, and Irina Shayk. Celebrated trans model Alex Consani just showed his actual nipples in a see-through corset.
Don’t forget about the alleged abusers flitting about. Katy Perry may have been dressed like she’s qualifying in astronaut fencing for the next Olympics, but her all-white Stella McCartney was stained by recent assault accusations by Ruby Rose. All of us rolled our eyes at Blake Lively showing up in frothy sherbet Versace without a care in the world — the same day she settled her attempted two-year-long legal takedown of Justin Baldoni.
Per Met Gala rules, guests must be 18 to walk the carpet. You could frame Beyoncé’s 14-year-old daughter Blue Ivy and Nicole Kidman’s 17-year-old daughter Sunday Rose tagging along with their moms like a dress-up version of Bring Your Daughter to Work Day. But just like they say, “nothing good happens after 2 a.m.,” nothing good happens when you’re hanging around Sam Smith looking like “something unholy” in Christian Cowan.
If you ignored all of the guests, you might be able to enjoy Broadway star Joshua Henry’s joyful show-opening performance of Whitney Houston’s “I Wanna Dance With Somebody.” (Look away from Anna Wintour clapping to her own beat like an off-balance flamingo in sunglasses.)
To shed some light on the ballooning opulence of the most elite costume party you’ve never been invited to, the first-ever Met Gala in 1948 cost just $50 per ticket and was meant to raise funds for the Costume Institute’s latest annual exhibit. Today, the Gala remains the museum’s main cash cow.
But with all the fanfare outside the gallery walls, you might not even realize what treasures await a museumgoer once he walks through the door. Starting May 10, you’re invited to look past the Ozempic waifs of the Gala and feast your eyes upon the “Costume Art” exhibit designed to “reclaim the body.”
If, as celebrity gossip journalist Rob Shuter alleges, the jet set didn’t zip out the back door immediately after getting that red-carpet shot, fame-starved glitterati could peruse a collection of fashion for “the corpulent body. The disabled body. The pregnant body. The aging body.” You, too, can go look at a high-end designer’s “body-positive” idea of yourself for $30.
If the museum has even a shred of artistic sensibility left in its creative department, there will be souvenir keychain bottles of yellow liquid labeled “Met Gala ’26” available in the gift shop for $99 — a smug shout-out to us 99%.
As Chloe Malle finds her footing as Vogue’s new head of editorial, and the Met Gala gets “Bezos-ed,” we wonder how many years this bloated behemoth has left. Should we humanely put her out to pasture, or pull the plug on fashion’s hottest mess?
Livestream co-host and model Cara Delevingne remarked, “Holy moly, what a show. Aren’t we lucky to witness that?” Lucky isn’t the word I would choose.
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