Mark Zuckerberg and Priscillia Chan Quietly Attended the Met Gala
Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan attended the Met Gala for the first time on Monday. The couple bypassed the traditional photo opportunity on the museum steps entirely, an entrance that drew notice given the circumstances surrounding the evening. A crowd protesting the gala’s honorary chairs, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and his wife Lauren Sánchez Bezos, was gathered across the street from the museum. Monday also marked the first day of a New Mexico trial centered on Meta’s child safety practices. (Jeff Bezos also skipped the carpet, but his wife posed for photographers early on in the evening.) Despite the subdued arrival, Zuckerberg and Chan attended the cocktail hour and dinner, where they were reportedly seated near Anna Wintour, the Met Gala’s longtime chairwoman as well as chief content officer for Condé Nast and global editorial director of Vogue. Zuckerberg, 41, wore a black Prada tuxedo. Chan, also 41, wore a red Alaïa gown. Zuckerberg’s appearance represented a visible step in his ongoing effort to recast his public image through fashion. Once synonymous with gray T-shirts and hoodies with blue jeans, he has spent the last few years dabbling in high fashion. The couple’s Met Gala debut also comes two months after they sat front row together at a Prada show during Paris Fashion Week in February. Meta was among the technology companies —alongside OpenAI, Shopify, Amazon, and Snapchat—that purchased tables at this year’s event. Individual tickets cost $100,000; tables are priced at $350,000. Bezos and Sánchez Bezos, who are also this year’s lead sponsors alongside Saint Laurent and Condé Nast, have drawn sustained criticism in the weeks leading up to the gala. Posters appeared near the museum reading “The Bezos Met Gala: Brought to you by worker exploitation,” a reference to longstanding allegations of mistreatment of workers at Amazon fulfillment centers. New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who previously said the event’s optics are incompatible with his focus on economic inequality, was not in attendance, although top New York City and State elected officials are traditionally invited. The Met Gala serves as the annual fundraiser for the museum’s Costume Institute, and this year’s fête reportedly broke records, generating more than $42 million. Each year, the Met Gala’s dress code reflects the theme of that year’s accompanying exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The new exhibition this week, “Costume Art,” explores the relationship between clothing and the human form across Western art from prehistory to the present. The evening also inaugurated the new 12,000-square-foot Condé M. Nast Galleries at the museum.
Source: Yahoo