The Met Gala— fashion’s most opulent night of the year—will be held on Monday, 6th May next week, and given the state of the world rn, people are salty. This year, Kennedy heir Jack Schlossberg is leading the protest charge, calling on his 674k Instagram followers to boycott the Gala. “Hey Anna Wintour! I’m sorry, but I am boycotting the Met Gala this year. I can’t go in good conscience with so much happening at home and around the world. It’s just not the time,” he said in a video with just short of 20k likes. He also played on the words of his great-grandad, JFK, in an Instagram caption: “ask not what your country can do for you. Just boycott the Met Gala”, and damned it a “pathetic event for corporate sluts.”
But it’s not just down to his following and ties to one of the world’s most famous families that his boycott is significant. In 2024, in the lead-up to the Biden V. Trump election, Schlossberg was appointed a political correspondent for Vogue. Vogue is the MET Gala’s sponsor, and every year since 1995, it’s been chaired by Vogue’s Editor-in-Chief Anna Wintour: as such, the words Vogue and The Met are synonymous—so coming from a former employee, the boycott undeniably hits harder.
So why is Schlossberg boycotting, and what exactly does he mean by “the state of the world”? Amid his barrage of content, Schlossberg shared a screenshot of the Google AI overview for the search term “boycott Met Gala,” which summarizes that the boycotts are down to its “perceived opulence” and “juxtaposition with global crises, particularly the ongoing conflict in Gaza,” suggesting that he is boycotting for similar reasons.
Granted, this isn’t the first time people have taken issue with the star-studded event, tickets for which, last year, cost $75,000. In 2024, 7 months into Israel’s bombing of Gaza, masses of netizens took to protesting the Met and blocking celebrities en masse, while people protested IRL on Fifth Avenue. Tbf, it didn’t help that the theme was “The Garden of Time,” a short story about the rich being shielded in luxe surroundings from a “vast concourse of laboring humanity”.
Schlossberg also shared a screenshot of the Vogue feature from when his appointment was announced, and Tweeted “FASHION IS POLITICAL—So then why is VOGUE SO QUIET?” Obviously, the young Kennedy is calling Vogue out for evading politics (at a time when more and more publications, and even brands, are leaning into divisive foreign policy issues) and flagging the irrationality of that, given that fashion is inherently political. It is, however, a little ironic that Schlossberg himself is evasively sidestepping naming the precise political and social issues behind his boycott.
But there’s likely another reason behind his protest: Schlossberg supplemented the posts with the announcement that instead of going to the gala, he’s focused on launching something else, “Instead I will produce something informative on my own news channel." It’s also worth noting that if this year “isn’t the time” for the Met Gala, neither was last year, nor, for that matter, was 2017, the year Schollsberg attended (following Trump’s first term victory). With that in mind, his boycott may well be, at least in part, a publicity stunt to get a buzz going.
But regardless of how far his reasoning seeps into personal motive—or the fact that the gala is finally paying homage to the impact Black culture has had on fashion via its theme “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style”—Schollsberg likely won’t be alone in his dissent. Last year, its decadent display of celebrity culture brought the coinciding conflict and inequality into sharp relief, drawing comparisons to the Hunger Games. Given Trump’s renewed presidency, this year will do the same— whether they’re fully aligned or not, Schollsberg will have his acolytes.
Featured image via ©Getty
See: Lyst Index 2025: The Lyst Index for Q1 is out and Loewe tops the charts
See: Breaking down the brief for our collaboration with Bentley Motors and CSM graduates
