Garlic, onion and chives were nowhere to be found at Monday’s Met Gala 2024, which celebrated New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art’s new exhibit, “Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion,” with the theme “Garden of Time.” Those food items were banned, but the Chinese mobile app TikTok—which is subject to a pending ban signed into law by President Joe Biden—was not.
In fact, TikTok CEO Shou Chew, who was made an honorary chair for the event earlier this year, made his first appearance since the ban was passed in Congress two weeks ago.
TikTok, owned by the Chinese company ByteDance, was also the first social media platform to sponsor the annual event, known as “fashion’s biggest night out.” It has been seen as fitting, as TikTok really has become an arbiter of fashion in the 2020s, and thus fitting its CEO was named honorary co-chair.
There is also the feeling that Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour, who oversees the event, essentially legitimized the dance app’s place in the fashion space. Yet, Wintour couldn’t have predicted the Met Gala would come just days after the ban was announced, and she had to carefully navigate the fallout.
“The public lashing of Anna Wintour seems like an overreach by her detractors, at best,” explained technology industry analyst Charles King of Pund-IT. “The fact is that the platform is legal, available and functional in the U.S. for the next eight to 12 months. Plus, it seems unlikely that the People’s Republic of China could glean valuable information from the Met Gala, outside of picking up leading edge and over-the-edge fashion tips.”
TikTok—The Ticket To The Met Gala
Even before the sponsorship, TikTok was carving out its niche in the world of fashion, but it could be argued that Wintour invited the influencers of the world to the Met Gala. Event organizers–especially those in charge of high-profile spectacles–may see the power of TikTok in reaching eyeballs.
“For fashion, music, and events TikTok is yet another platform that for a time delivered more eyeballs and clicks than others,” said Susan Schreiner, technology and social media analyst at C4 Trends. “This isn’t about long-term loyalty—but rather it’s about business.”
The Met Gala also came just days after the social media app and Universal Music Group settled a royalty dispute to bring the latter’s music back onto the platform.
“It’s good perception branding for TikTok to sponsor the Met Gala, or to finally reach an equitable business deal with Universal Music, restoring artists to the platform and entering a new era of ‘strategic collaboration between the two organizations,” Schreiner added.
A PR Coup For TikTok!
Symbolically, it could be said that Wintour invited the influencers of the world to the Met Gala. If anything, the fact that TikTok sponsored the event could serve to suggest to fashion-conscious Americans that perhaps lawmakers were wrong in their ban of the app.
“Wintour is savvily ‘following the money’ in regards to the tens of millions of young people who follow TikTok religiously,” suggested King. “That, plus the efforts of influencers to share up-to-the-minute news, and experiences makes TikTok a natural platform to promote or resuscitate cultural events which might not otherwise interest young people. Anna Wintour gets that. Those who are complaining either don’t understand Tik Tok’s commercial value or are looking the other way to score cheap political points.”
