THE PRICE OF POPULARITY
Boldfacers shell out $30K
IT’S Anna’s party and she’ll invite who she wants to. On Monday, hundreds of celebs, designers, moguls and tech titans — all vetted by Vogue Editor-in-Chief Anna Wintour — will descend upon the Metropolitan Museum of Art for the 69th annual Met Gala. And this year, the list is tighter than ever. A source close to the event said the number of guests for the Rei Kawakubo/ Comme des Garçons-themed ball was slimmed from last year’s 610 attendees “to make it more intimate and private. “The party has shifted in size over the years according to theme . . . For the ‘Punk’ theme [in 2013] it was a slightly larger, more rambunctious crowd.” Since Wintour took over as gala chair in 1995, the party has become a star-studded extravaganza. Everyone from Beyoncé to Reese Witherspoon, Derek Jeter to George Clooney spends months prepping for it. Even the hosts are glamorous: This year, the co-chairs are Tom Brady, Gisele Bündchen, Katy Perry and Pharrell Williams. The Met Gala was started in 1946 as a run-of-the-mill charity ball. Nowadays, the likes of Kanye West and The Weeknd perform, and it’s one of the biggest fund-raisers in NYC. The 2016 event raised approximately $13.5 million for the Met’s Anna Wintour Costume Center. But just because you have the pedigree and money — tickets start at $30,000 per person and, according to sources, go as high as $50,000 — doesn’t mean you’re invited. That’s true even if you’re one of the 100 members of the Friends of the Costume Institute, the committee that helps raise funds for the center. “Anna is extremely restrictive on who can buy a ticket,” said a socialite who has attended the event for years. “Many people I know who are Friends, [and] who have the money to pay, have been turned down. Anna decides they can’t go. Period.” The socialite said that, in the past, members — who have already donated $10,000 a year to be on the committee — would be given discounted ticket rates. Now, “there aren’t as many tickets for them,” she said. “Plus, the Friends tickets cost more. I think [the Gala team is] more concerned with getting celebrities to fill the seats. [Vogue contributing editor] Lauren Santo Domingo and [Estée Lauder creative director] Aerin Lauder will get to go. But I know at least 10 people who are Friends who were told no.”
Cameron Silver, founder of luxe vintage shop Decades in Los Angeles, who has been to the gala five times, corroborated this exclusivity.
“I know people [on the Friends committee] who get really frustrated that they can’t bring their husbands,” she said. “It becomes a very expensive girls’ night out.” Sometimes even celebs don’t make the cut. Supermodel Coco Rocha, for years a Met Gala staple, told The Post that it was an honor to attend but that she didn’t receive
an invitation this year. Why? “I don’t know,” she said. “You’ll have to ask Anna that.” (A rep for Vogue said they do not comment on the guest list.)
It’s not uncommon to be banned because you’ve wronged Wintour, or her friends.
Perhaps this year’s co-chair Katy Perry didn’t take too kindly to Rocha’s having accused her of being a copycat after the singer showed up to the 2013 MTV Video Music Awards in the same Emanuel Ungaro leop- ard-print the model had worn to the Met Gala nearly four months earlier. “I wore her dress at the Met [Gala in 2013],” Rocha playfully told Mashable, “so I’m going to be phoning someone up and wondering what happened there.”
Celebrity stylist Rachel Zoe was invited to sit at shoe designer Brian Atwood’s table in 2007, but was then disinvited, allegedly, because she had boasted in a New York Times interview that she was more influential than Wintour.
“Project Runway” star Tim Gunn dished on E!’s “Fashion Police” that his invitation was rescinded when he told The Post in 2006 about watching Wintour being carried down five flights of stairs at a fashion show by two bodyguards. After being asked by Vogue flacks to make a retraction — and refusing — Gunn claimed he had officially become persona non grata: “We’ve had an open war ever since.”
THOSE who make the cut and receive an invite to the gala still need to pony up the cash. It’s a pay-to-play event — unless, of course, you’re a celebrity who is invited as a guest of a designer or corporate sponsor.
While individual tickets are hard to come by, it’s almost impossible to snag one of the tables (there were 65 last year) which reportedly go for $275,000 but which sources told The Post can cost upwards of $500,000. They’re typically snatched up by sponsors like Apple and Warner Bros., and fashion houses like Maison Valentino.
“I know a lot of people who are very happy to donate a quarter of a million dollars but they are unable to procure a table because some corporate sponsor has first dibs,” said Silver.
Sponsors like Yahoo, which ponied up $3 million for two tables at the 2015 gala, typically underwrite the party and museum exhibit. And they’re usually in with Vogue. Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer appeared in a 2013 Vogue article and shoot. Apple, which was a sponsor in 2016 and is again this year, purchased a 12-page spread in the March 2015 issue of Vogue, valued at more than $2.2 million according to Adweek.
Everyone who buys a table still needs to submit their guest list to Wintour for approval. She also oversees which big-name celebs sit at which table, as well as suggesting, every so gently, which actors and models attend as each designer’s guests, like Lily Collins and Brit Marling for Valentino at the 2012 gala. (The designers then dress “their” celebs for the event.)
In the 2016 Met Gala documentary, “The First Monday in May,” Wintour is heard shooting down Calvin Klein’s request to have actor Josh Hartnett at the brand’s table.
“What has he done lately?” Wintour asked her team dismissively.
Gala guests — who are instructed to dress in theme — are given staggered arrival times. After the red carpet, there is a receiving line with the hosts. Then, everyone proceeds to the exhibition, which kicks off that day, be- fore continuing on to cocktails and, finally, a sit-down dinner and concert. Since Wintour took over the gala, Glorious Food owner Sean Driscoll has catered every time. Last year, there was an apple dessert — a wink to the tech sponsor.
If you’re lucky enough to win Wintour’s seal of approval, make sure you don’t miss a bash — ever.
“I know people who decided not to go one year because they weren’t around or didn’t like the theme,” the socialite said. “Once you do that, you’re not invited back unless you’re triple A-list.”
EVEN if you go every year, running the gauntlet up the museum’s steep red-carpeted stairs in front of a baying paparazzi can be an exercise in humiliation for some guests.
“Everyone walks the red carpet,” said Silver, “but less well-known guests hear crickets because no one is paying attention. It is one of the most demeaning things to walk those stairs as a non-celebrity. I’ve seen so many people run up those stairs and they look amazing, but they’re not recognizable [enough for the paparazzi to care]. It’s very bruising on the ego.”
Still, in the case of a no-show, plenty of rich people are willing to endure any kind of humiliation in order to go.
“I’ve known of society names who couldn’t get a ticket and are prepped to go if there’s a last-minute seat that becomes available,” said Silver. “They have their look ready even if they aren’t certain of whether they will actually have a seat days before the event.”
The socialite agreed: “There are no bad seats in that room. It’s the Oscars of New York. When you turn around and you see Kanye at one side and Taylor Swift and every celebrity you’ve ever heard of every time you turn your head, it’s hard to be disappointed.
“You can talk to anyone. Everyone is very friendly there because the crowd is so selective,” said the socialite, who has hobnobbed with Taylor Swift, Jennifer Lopez and Kim Kardashian.
“When the ticket is $50,000 and you received Anna’s stamp of approval,” she said, “it’s a forgone conclusion that you’re worth being there.”