The first Monday in May heralds fashion’s biggest night of the year – The Met Gala.
A-listers from Hollywood, music and fashion will converge on the famous stairs of Manhattan’s Metropolitan Museum of Art to compete for the spotlight.
But for the brains behind the event, Andrew Bolton, the work doesn’t stop when the gala ends.
Bolton, who is the chief curator for the museum’s Costume Institute for which the gala fundraises, has given a rare interview about the months of work that goes into the event, revealing that his phone will ring ‘like clockwork’ at 8:30am the morning after the annual gala.
Anna Wintour, Vogue’s global editorial director and Met Gala host who personally approves each guest, will say to Bolton: ‘So, Andrew, next year…’
‘Anna is very focused,’ Bolton says. ‘It’s extraordinary.’
Andrew Bolton, the brains behind the Met Gala, has revealed behind the scenes secrets to fashion’s biggest night and what it’s like working alongside Anna Wintour
Focused Wintour also has strict rules for her annual gala, famously banning cameras inside the Met, which Bolton says makes the star-studded event ‘oddly democratic, they are all starstruck by other people.’
‘You’re seeing all these people behaving like normal people.’
Of course, such a high profile event attracts gatecrashers, and Bolton says he and Wintour can’t help but admire their ingenuity.
‘I think it was last year, someone disguised themselves as a chef [to get in],’ he tells The Sunday Times Style Magazine. ‘It was so funny – that came out in one of our meetings and Anna just said, “Well, I hope she could cook.”‘
Even Bolton himself has got somewhat lost among the sea of A-listers, revealing how at his very first gala in 2003 he was ‘so nervous and wearing my dad’s tuxedo, which is too large, and an actress thought I was a waiter and asked for a glass of wine, which I got for her.’
As for this year’s event, Bolton’s biggest concern is the Fashion Is Art theme and how celebs will ‘interpret it’, musing ‘it could go pear-shaped.’
‘I worry that people are going to take it literally — like coming as Frida Kahlo. There’s going to be so many Andy Warhol wigs on the red carpet. Or someone will just come as a painting.’
The 2026 event is co-chaired by Beyonce, Venus Williams and Nicole Kidman but it has faced mass scrutiny following the announcement that Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and his wife Lauren Sánchez Bezos would serve as lead sponsors and honorary chairs.
The 2026 event is co-chaired by Beyonce, Venus Williams and Nicole Kidman with a Fashion Is Art theme. Kidman is pictured at the 2025 gala
This year’s gala has faced scrutiny following the announcement that Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and his wife Lauren Sánchez Bezos would serve as lead sponsors and honorary chairs. Pictured at the 2024 Met Gala
As well as his ICE affiliation, Amazon’s treatment of workforce has also caused issues, with activist group Everyone Hates Elon displaying posters around New York reading: ‘The Bezos Met Gala: Brought to you by worker exploitation.’
An industry insider told the Daily Mail: ‘It’s, quite frankly, very hurtful and very disturbing for [the Bezoses] to be the face of this year’s Met Gala…
‘Something that is really meaningful to a lot of people and to such a highly regarded and highly respected institution. It feels like a real slap in the face to a lot of people.’
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The Daily Mail has been told that Meryl Streep was rumoured to have been one of the Met Gala’s co-chairs this year, but allegedly declined to do so because of the Bezoses’ bankrolling and presiding over the party as guests of honour.
Internal drama is just as rampant, the fashion industry insider said, as there’s been dissent quietly brewing among those involved with planning the annual event – a fundraiser for the museum’s fashion collection.
They explained: ‘The fashion industry and the people who work in it are by and large, very liberal. Anna has always publicly supported Democratic candidates for president and Vogue endorsed Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris…
‘Even the politicians that we’ve seen attend the Met Gala over the years have been overwhelmingly liberal.
‘To have a couple that aligns themselves with and have contributed a million dollars to inaugurating a president who has sought to eviscerate DEI, dismantle Roe v Wade, disenfranchise Black voters and crack down on immigration in a way that is so inhumane and horrific, rubs a lot of people the wrong way.’
