By Chavie Lieber
When Jeff Bezos attended his first Met Gala, the year was 2012, and the Amazon founder was asserting his company's place in fashion.
Amazon served as the marquee sponsor of the star-studded event, an annual fundraiser for the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute, making Bezos a guest of honor. He had just announced his company's ambition to disrupt fashion, as it had done with books and household goods.
At the time, Bezos was still squarely a tech nerd. He had admitted to a reporter that fashion's biggest night "wasn't on my radar at all." In an interview published the same day as the gala, he couldn't name the brands behind his own T-shirt or shoes.
How times have changed.
Bezos and his wife, Lauren Sánchez Bezos, have become front-row fixtures at fashion shows. As centibillionaires, they dress in high-end designer labels and commission custom outfits. Sánchez Bezos revealed the details of her wedding dress on a digital Vogue cover. They're patrons of the luxury industry not only as consumers but as donors to organizations that support designers.
Now, they're personally underwriting this Monday's Met Gala -- the multimillion-dollar event and its charitable contributions to curatorial work, clothing conservation and research. Anna Wintour, Condé Nast's chief content officer and Vogue's global editorial director, personally called to request their presence and patronage, Sánchez Bezos told the "Today" show.
Through a representative, Bezos and Sánchez Bezos declined to comment. Representatives for Condé Nast and Wintour declined to comment.
"The Met is very grateful for their generous support of The Met's 'Costume Art' exhibition and our fundraising gala," a spokeswoman for the magazine said.
When the couple stand on the museum's stairs, they'll join stars including Beyoncé, Nicole Kidman, Sabrina Carpenter and Doja Cat.
It's as clear a sign as any that Bezos has finally been welcomed into fashion's inner circle.
Amazon was already selling tons of clothes when it launched Amazon Fashion 14 years ago. Department stores were losing market share, and the company saw an opportunity to court high-end brands that needed new distribution partners.
"We want to be a great department store, like Bloomingdale's, Nordstrom, and Saks," Cathy Beaudoin, then-president of Amazon Fashion, told the Seattle Times in 2013.
Many designers rebuffed Amazon's entreaties. It wasn't the first time Bezos had been told no. When he visited Seventh Avenue showrooms years earlier, apparel executives showed reluctance to working with Amazon, The Wall Street Journal reported in 2016.
But Amazon was persistent, using its financial muscle to sponsor industry events and, in the process, build credibility with high fashion. In 2015, Amazon became the patron for the menswear presentations during New York Fashion Week, a sponsorship it held through 2017.
In 2016, LVMH chief financial officer Jean-Jacques Guiony told its investors there was "no way" it would do business with Amazon and that the company "does not fit with our brands."
Still, the online retailer continued to deepen its ties to the fashion world.
In 2020, during the Covid pandemic, Bezos's company donated $500,000 to the fashion industry via the Council of Fashion Designers/Vogue Fashion Fund, a program that supports American designers. In a statement at the time, Wintour, then Vogue's editor in chief, thanked Amazon for "quickly sharing its resources to aid American designers affected by the pandemic."
Around that time, Amazon Fashion made several high-profile hires, including multiple former Vogue editors.
In 2024, Amazon bought a stake in the luxury department stores. It struck a partnership with Saks Fifth Avenue and invested $475 million into a new company, Saks Global, allowing it to sell Saks inventory on Amazon. The partnership ended this past February, as part of the aftermath of the Saks bankruptcy.
"We've built something unique in the fashion space," said Jenny Freshwater, Amazon's vice president of fashion and fitness, in a statement, noting that "it's taken many years of hard work and invention across many different teams and leaders across Amazon, including Jeff when he was our CEO." Freshwater said more and more brands were joining Amazon "every year."
Amazon has rooted itself into other corners of the industry. Since 2022 it's been sponsoring the CFDA Awards, the fashion industry's other big event.
"They have been a great partner," Steven Kolb, president and CEO of the CFDA, told the Journal in an interview. "They help us celebrate American fashion."
Kolb said the CFDA had refused sponsorship opportunities from companies like Shein because the partnership didn't "feel right," but he didn't feel that way with Amazon.
"With Amazon, I see action and sincerity and a strong interest in supporting an industry," he said. "To me, it is very genuine and authentic."
When Bezos and Sánchez Bezos got together, his fashion era began in earnest. The couple sat front row at a runway show for Tom Ford (who designed Bezos' first Met Gala tux) in Los Angeles in February 2020, next to Wintour and her theater-producer daughter, Bee Carrozzini. A year later, they attended the Gucci-sponsored Los Angeles County Museum of Art art and film gala, Bezos all smiles in a velvet tuxedo jacket.
Gone was the awkward tech founder; in his place, a glowed-up billionaire now sat comfortably among the cultural elite.
The couple has since become fixtures on the gala circuit and are given the A-list treatment at fashion week. The couple's mega-wedding in Venice was a major fashion event, with Sánchez Bezos living la dolce vita in custom Dolce & Gabbana and Schiaparelli. Sánchez Bezos now works with the stylist Law Roach, known for dressing Zendaya and Celine Dion. Through a representative, Roach declined to comment.
Critics on social media aired all kinds of eat-the-rich angst when the Met first announced the Bezoses's involvement with its gala in November.
"Lauren generally believes that through funding and partnering with the CFDA, we can really shift how people shop and the way we do business in fashion. It's a genuine interest of hers," said Kolb of the CFDA. Within his own circles, he said, "I have not heard anything -- an eye roll, a question, or looked at this as an insincere thing."
In October 2025, the couple's Bezos Earth Fund gave the CFDA $6.25 million to support fashion through scholarships and grants. The foundation, which has pledged $10 billion to fight climate change, recently gave $34 million in grants to sustainable-materials research.
Leading up to this year's Met Gala, protesters have called for boycotts of the event. Every year, the Met Gala attracts protesters, but this year detractors have been especially loud, citing Amazon's work with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency and Bezos's ties to President Trump. Uniting the naysayers is an anti-billionaire stance; Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who staked his campaign on affordability, told the local news outlet Hell Gate that he would not attend the gala.
Volunteers from one activist group have been placing anti-Bezos posters around New York City. Amazon declined to comment on the planned protests.
Amy Odell, a journalist who wrote a 2022 biography of Wintour, said the former Vogue editor in chief's main objective is to find sponsors. Last year, the gala raised a record $31 million for the Costume Institute.
"She's aware of who the power players are and makes an effort to meet them," Odell said.
In Bezos and Sánchez Bezos, Wintour has eager partners with funds to spare.
"They like expensive things," Odell said of the couple. "And fashion has never been more expensive."
Write to Chavie Lieber at Chavie.Lieber@WSJ.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
May 02, 2026 19:00 ET (23:00 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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