Entire Kardashian-Jenner family invited to the Met Gala after years of snubs
Fashion’s biggest annual event will kick off in New York tomorrow at the Met Museum, with some surprising names featuring on the coveted guest list.
Queen of fashion Anna Wintour will once again welcome the rich and powerful as she hosts the Met Gala for the 26th time tomorrow.
As always, Wintour, the ultimate influencer, is in charge of the guest list.
Guests have been asked to “embody the grandeur – and perhaps the dichotomy – of gilded age New York” and directed to Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence. The theme harks back to an era when Astors, Vanderbilts and the Rockefellers ruled NYC.
Now, of course, almost no one wields more pop-culture power than the Kardashians.
And the New York Post has learned that, for the very first time, nearly the entire family will make up the 400 guests in attendance – including Kim and boyfriend Pete Davidson; Kourtney, who will make her Met debut with fiance Travis Barker; and Khloe; momager Kris Jenner; and Kendall and Kylie Jenner.
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Likely not in attendance will be brother Rob – currently embroiled in his court battle with former girlfriend Blac Chyna and who is rarely seen in public – or Kylie’s baby daddy Travis Scott, who has been keeping a low profile since the November 2021 mass-casualty incident at his AstroWorld concert in Houston.
Kanye West is not expected to attend this year, either, according to the NY Post.
But not so long ago, the Kardashians were persona non grata at the annual bash, rumoured to be thought of as tacky reality stars by Wintour.
And in fact, this is the first year of attendance for Khloe and Kourtney – who seems to have become recently fashionable thanks to her romance with Barker.
Kim first attended the event while heavily pregnant with daughter North in 2013, wearing a floral gown by Riccardo Tisci for Givenchy, she accompanied her now ex-husband Kanye West, who was performing at the event. As she reminisced in 2019 on Twitter: “I was Kanye’s plus-one & so nervous!”
She revealed that she wept when she got home because of “insecurity”.
But Kim must have done something to get in Wintour’s good books as she’s been a regular at the Met ever since and graced the cover of Vogue in 2014 and again in February.
Wintour has said that Kim – who infamously attended the Met last September in head-to-toe Balenciaga including a face-covering balaclava – is the sister who has had the biggest style evolution.
“I personally admire the way that she’s become a little more minimal in the way she’s dressing, and a little more covered,” Wintour told Vogue in March 2019.
How do you score an invite to the Met Gala?
A source familiar with the running of the event revealed: “It’s Anna’s party, and just because you’re not invited doesn’t mean she doesn’t like you necessarily – you may not be up to her fashion standards.
“The tickets are also very expensive. You either need to have $35,000 for a ticket or a designer wants to dress you and pay for you.”
The way it works, the source said, is that Wintour, 72, has her own seats to fill, and then everyone who buys a table for between $200-$300,000 – even including good friends like designer Michael Kors – has their guest list vetted by her.
“They can invite who they want, but they run their guests past Anna,” said the source. “And I am sure there are some suggestions. If Anna has had a bad experience with you, or doesn’t feel like you should be in, you’re not invited.”
Stephanie Winston Wolkoff worked at Vogue for 11 years and was Wintour’s lead on the Met Gala nine times. The 51-year-old, who went on to become senior advisor to former First Lady Melania Trump, gave Page Six a fascinating glimpse into how Wintour – whom she dubbed “militant” – picks the guests.
“Anna’s meticulous in her detail. Every detail is thought out and orchestrated. She has a vision, she knows how to execute her vision – and the guests just fall into that.
Within that vision there is a brilliancy of truly knowing how to bring the right people together,” Winston Wolkoff told Page Six. “It’s not just about showing up on the red carpet and getting your picture taken. It’s about what happens in that room – it’s magical.
“That guest list is so tailored. You can have a million people willing to spend any amount of money on a ticket, but there has to be a reason for you being there, and Anna has such an unbelievably strategic way of getting the right people in the right room at the same time … it’s like a chess game and she knows how to play it,” Winston Wolkoff added.
“She knows everyone in the room, it’s like a movie, she’s gone over every single name.”
Intense planning goes into the night
Wintour – Condé Nast’s global chief content officer as well as the global editorial director of Vogue – has been hosting the Met Gala since 1995. The ball itself has existed since 1948, but was formerly a society midnight supper not held at the Met Museum.
In the new book Anna: The Biography, Winston Wolkoff tells author Amy Odell that Wintour is “militant” in her planning of the ball.
“Every guest has a prearranged arrival time, and Wintour’s people know what cars they’ll arrive in, if they’ve left the house, what they’ll be wearing, and if they’ve broken a zipper along the way that needs to be fixed,” Odell writes.
The book also says: “A night of excess and exhibition, the Met Gala is where Wintour flaunts her dominance over an industry that’s predicated on the understanding that there is an ‘in’ and an ‘out’. In Wintour’s world, people occupy those distinct buckets.
“Some are always ‘out’ – low-performing assistants, the Met’s event planners who tell her she can’t hang a dropped ceiling over a priceless statue, the Hilton sisters. (Nicky Hilton attended in 2001, but sister Paris has never been).
“Some, whose success, power, creativity, and beauty are undeniable, are therefore always ‘in’ (Tom Ford, Serena Williams, Roger Federer, Michelle Obama). Some begin as ‘in’ and get moved to ‘out’ (the late André Leon Talley). Others begin as ‘out’ and become ‘in’ (Kardashian).”
As Talley – the former creative director of Vogue who infamously lashed out at Wintour for dropping him – said before his death in January: “As much as she loves a person who has talent, if she does not love you, then you’re in trouble.”
Still, Wintour broke down in tears at Talley’s star-studded memorial in Harlem on Friday, according to onlookers, as she told how he came to her side after her mother’s death.
Meanwhile, Lisa Love, a personal friend and former longtime West Coast director of Vogue, told Odell: “If you get frozen by her, that’s it. She’s a Scorpio, you’re done. It’s that cold.”
Wintour’s black-listed guest
The only person whom Wintour has famously said she will never invite to the Met publicly is former president Donald Trump.
In October 2017, during a segment on The Late Late Show with James Corden, she was given the choice to eat pickled pigs’ feet or reveal the one person she would cut from the guest list.
Wintour responded “Donald Trump” without missing a beat.
Mr Trump had been a regular at the annual fundraiser from the 1980s up until 2012, when he last attended with wife Melania.
“Anna had a relationship with Kanye before Kim, just like she knew Donald before she met Melania,” said a New York society source. “It’s interesting, now she’s close with the Kardashians. She’s not snobby.”
Trump’s daughter Ivanka and her husband Jared Kushner, now living in Miami, had also been frequent attendees – although their absence at the event caused a stir last September.
“It’s unclear if Ivanka and Jared, who were once staples at the Met, will stand by her father or return in the future,” one highly-placed political operative told the Post.
Said the society source: “They will never be welcomed back.”
Another well-sourced political insider added: “I wouldn’t underestimate Ivanka’s ability to get back to the Met again once it’s clear that Donald is not running again. It’s the spectre of him running in 2024 that has people afraid. They’re not going near Ivanka and Jared until they’re confident that Donald is not going to run.”
Who else will be there in 2022?
This year’s co-hosts are Regina King, Blake Lively, Ryan Reynolds and Lin-Manuel Miranda.
While 2021’s event – held in September after Covid precautions moved its usual “first Monday in May” date – skewed towards a younger crowd, including social media stars Addison Rae, Dixie D’Amelio, Emma Chamberlain and Madison Beer, this year is a return to the “old guard,” with bigger Hollywood stars, said the source familiar with the event.
Which doesn’t mean you won’t see influencers.
“Anna has leaned into the TikTokkers … Years ago she would not have invited the Kardashians, but now, they’re a mainstay,” said the source familiar with the event.
“I think Anna is just … following in the footsteps of the world. She has been for a while.
“She’s always championed athletes like Serena Williams, and Gabrielle Union and Dwyane Wade are always at the Met. And she has her regulars, like Cindy Crawford, Rande Gerber, their daughter Kaia Gerber – who’ll be coming this year with her boyfriend Austin Butler.”
Winston Wolkoff said that anyone offering a significant donation to the Costume Institute would be favoured highly over others who just want to attend the party.
“[Wintour] also takes into consideration what films are coming out, what is coming [to Broadway]. If it’s between a show that’s winning an Emmy or someone that she really likes who’s maybe been out of the industry for a few years, she will place attention on the individuals in the middle of promoting to help promote them, Winston Wolkoff explained. “It’s very delicate.”
Interestingly, Will and Jada Smith have never been to the Met, although their kids, Jaden and Willow, have.
“I don’t think they’ve ever been invited,” said the source. “But considering what went down at the Oscars, I don’t think they ever would be.”
The theme
Asked about Wintour’s criteria for guests to the event at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, one Met source said: “We want guests who are respectful of the rules and the museum.
“They shouldn’t be on their phones, they shouldn’t be smoking, they follow museum policy. We want guests who are there to be present and have a great time, to understand that this evening is for supporting the museum.”
“For Anna, number one, this is a fundraiser for the Met and important to the city of New York and she wants people to understand that. We are trying to make it a little elevated this year.
“Last September, we had people who had never been, it was all about America, about youth. This second part of the exhibition is more heavy, more intellectual.”
Said Winston Wolkoff: “Anna’s mind is always a million miles ahead of anyone else. That stare is not just a stare – it’s her looking way ahead and thinking about what’s coming next.”
This year, guests have been told to dress in the theme of “Gilded glamour, white-tie”.
The sartorial theme comes from the exhibit the gala launches: “In America: An Anthology of Fashion,” which is the second of star curator Andrew Bolton’s two-part show exploring the roots of American style.
This year’s will showcase some lesser-known designers, and also some top film directors, including Sofia Coppola, Martin Scorsese, host King, and last year’s Oscar winner Chloé Zhao.
Their work will be displayed in the period rooms of the American Wing.
How to stream the Met Gala
Red carpet coverage from the event will start from 8am on Tuesday AEST (6pm local time).
The red carpet can be streamed online at Vogue.com. The online coverage will be hosted by LaLa Anthony, Vanessa Hudgens and fashion journalist Hamish Bowles.
This article originally appeared in the New York Post and was reproduced with permission
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