Last year, Anna Wintour had a Jeff Bezos problem. Next year, she may have a Bezos problem of a different sort: finding someone else with equally deep pockets.

After Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez Bezos served as lead sponsors and honorary chairs of the 2026 Met Gala, multiple sources say Wintour had hoped the couple might return as major patrons in 2027. Lauren, at least, seemed like the more plausible repeat customer. A devoted fashion fan who’s become a front-row regular in New York and Paris, she was viewed by sources as the half of the couple more likely to be receptive to an encore.

That might seem surprising given what happened last time. Ahead of the 2026 event, anti-tech activist group Everyone Hates Elon papered New York with “Boycott the Bezos Met Ball” posters and handed out bottles of fake urine, a not-so-subtle reference to reports of Amazon warehouse employees being denied bathroom breaks. By the time the gowns were packed away, the press and social media had rechristened fashion’s coolest annual fundraiser the “Tech Gala,” the “Bezos Ball” and the “Rich People’s Ball,” nearly drowning out its actual purpose: raising money for the Metropolitan Museum’s Costume Institute.

It didn’t help that Bezos’ image had changed considerably since Amazon first sponsored the Met Gala back in 2012. His attendance at Donald Trump’s second inauguration, Amazon’s $40 million licensing deal for the Melania Trump documentary and deep cuts at The Washington Post — the newspaper Bezos has owned since 2013 — had helped turn the onetime tech-world liberal savior into Enemy Oligarch No. 1 in certain circles. Nor did his spectacular $25 million Venice wedding to Lauren exactly soften the optics.

According to Condé Nast sources, Wintour was so taken aback by this year’s controversy, she subsequently convened an all-hands Vogue meeting and vowed to dial things down for the 2027 Gala: a tighter guest list, less ostentation, a clearer theme and, with any luck, fewer protesters outside.

So whom did Wintour choose to put at the center of her newly scandal-shy Met Gala? Um, John Galliano.

The brilliant but perpetually controversial former Dior and Maison Margiela designer will be the subject of the 2027 Costume Institute exhibition — and therefore the fashion figure at the center of the Gala — despite a spectacular 2011 fall from grace that began with a drunken antisemitic and racist tirade in a Paris bar. Galliano was fired from Dior, convicted in a French court and handed a suspended $8,400 fine.

Galliano has spent much of the ensuing 15 years trying to live that night down — apologizing, getting sober, learning about Judaism and, most recently, revisiting the whole ugly episode in the aptly named 2024 documentary High & Low — John Galliano. The New York Times recently reported that Wintour, Galliano and Costume Institute curator Andrew Bolton have spent the past year meeting with influential rabbis and Jewish leaders about the planned exhibition and its potential sensitivities.

So much for fewer protests.

As for Wintour’s hoped-for Bezos encore, that appears to have remained just that — a hope. The billionaire and his wife will not be reprising their sponsorship roles, leaving Wintour looking elsewhere for 2027’s financial firepower. Sources say George and Amal Clooney are high on Wintour’s wish list, along with Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos and former U.S. ambassador Nicole Avant.