Will the Met Gala know how to remain itself in Trump's America? Tonight, we may see two worlds collide

Tonight’s Met Gala is unlike any other. In past years, the iconic evening served to inaugurate exhibitions on themes such as American fashion imagination, Karl Lagerfeld’s contributions to fashion, religion, or the ephemeral nature of fashion. But the 2025 edition seems to represent the culmination of diversity and inclusion aspirations that began five years ago with the Black Lives Matter movement and a broader cultural reshuffling that brought issues of representation, post-colonialism, and proper cultural integration to the forefront of contemporary debate. These topics have been omnipresent across every aspect of pop culture during the Biden administration—a period in which, likely, the theme of this year’s exhibition was chosen: “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style,” which will explore the relationship between fashion and the stylistic codes of African-American communities, particularly the concept of elegance as a reappropriation of dignity and humanity in the face of a racist society. But between the announcement of the Met Gala’s theme and the actual event, Trump’s new presidency has arrived, ushering in a markedly different climate. One of the first examples of Trump’s and his party’s “newspeak” (to borrow a term from George Orwell) has been the acronym DEI, which theoretically means “diversity and inclusion,” but has quickly become a cover for far more offensive rhetoric and entrenched prejudices hidden behind the thin veil of that electorate’s racism. The main question now is: in the coming years, will the Met Gala be able to remain as progressive as it is this year?

It’s not as simple a question as it seems. While users (whether real or bots) are already on Twitter complaining that the Met Gala has gone “woke” both in theme and in the liberal, intellectual nature of the event, it is the actions of the Trump administration that raise greater concern for the future of fashion’s Super Bowl. On the cultural level, so far, the new president claims the same hegemony he claims for trade: he wants to tax foreign-produced films, has taken control of the iconic Kennedy Center, removing all previous directors, appointing himself as director, and filling the institution’s board with personal friends. He has also threatened the Smithsonian Museum with the withdrawal of public funding should it organize exhibitions centered on “inappropriate ideologies” accused of “undermining shared American values, dividing Americans by race, or promoting programs or ideologies incompatible with federal law and policy.” And this without mentioning the ongoing clash between the administration and American universities. It’s not hard to imagine, then, that starting next year the organizers of the Met Gala—from the Met’s curator to Anna Wintour herself—might face pressures and warnings to ensure the event and its exhibition align with the preferences of an increasingly authoritarian administration.

So far, the museum has chosen resistance: as a private institution, it cannot be threatened with funding cuts, and its DEI program has remained active and public, even as many others have made conspicuous backtracks to appease the new government. Anna Wintour herself has long been a staunch supporter of the Democratic Party, famously stating in 2017 that she would never invite Trump. And in many ways, while still an essential pop event, the Met Gala has become the premier showcase of those progressive and inclusive ideals that Republicans and the MAGA world associate with so-called “limousine liberals”—a term roughly equivalent in Italian to “radical chic”. The doubt that has arisen in the hours leading up to the 2025 Met Gala is the same question now facing the fashion world at large: on one hand, it’s a realm of progressive ideals; on the other, it remains tethered to power and economically dominant elites. In short, it’s highly unlikely that the major players in fashion—from LVMH and Kering to the media—will take strong anti-establishment positions. How can these opposing forces be balanced? Next year, will Wintour be able to refrain from inviting figures like Elon Musk, who last attended in 2022, or perhaps President Trump’s niece Kai Trump? Or even Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez, who appeared in Vogue in November 2023? Developments could go in two directions: either the Met Gala remains so liberal-coded that it is boycotted by conservatives, or, as happened with the Kennedy Center, there may be a takeover attempt by Trump supporters to ensure it reflects the new American ideals the president seeks to glorify.

We’ve already seen several luxury conglomerates—except for Kering—attempt to win over the new president with generous donations, even going so far, in the case of Bernard Arnault, as to attend Trump’s inauguration. Not that it helped them much: in Q2 of the year, U.S. tariffs could hit luxury sector profits hard. The contradiction is more evident this year than ever because LVMH—the same group whose founder funded and courted Trump—is sponsoring the Met Gala through its flagship brand, Louis Vuitton, whose CEO is expected to attend. And while the political heat is casting the Met Gala in a new and positive light—at least according to the New York Times—helping it shed its past image as an elite extravaganza or a symbol of liberal hypocrisy in favor of a role that now feels like that of a symbolic act of resistance, all that remains is to see how American conservatives will respond to an event that, through its celebration of Black culture, queerness, and intellectualism, seems tailor-made to trigger them more than ever.