This May, Shou Zi Chew will add a new item to his list of accomplishments: He’s becoming a fashion icon. The TikTok CEO has been named as an honorary chair for the upcoming Met Gala, which will return to New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 6.
Chew will be one of two honorary chairs, joining Jonathan Anderson of fashion house Loewe. Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour, who has chaired the Met Gala almost every year since 1995, will lead a star-studded group of hosts in 2024. She’ll be joined at the event by co-hosts Zendaya, Jennifer Lopez, Bad Bunny, and Chris Hemsworth.
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TikTok’s presence at the Gala will not be limited to its CEO’s chairing duties. The app is the title sponsor for Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion, the spring exhibit put on by the Met’s Costume Institute. The Met Gala, which is officially known as the Costume Institute Benefit, is a fundraiser for the titular organization.
Chew has become a familiar face in the United States thanks to his two appearances before Congress over the past year. In March 2023, he endured five hours of intense questioning on the subject of TikTok’s data security practices. His composure during that hearing made him a cult hero and sex symbol in China, so he’s well prepared to serve up some strong looks on the Met Gala red carpet.
His second Congressional appearance came last month, when he was one of five tech CEOs summoned to Capitol Hill to answer questions about the safety of minors on social media. He and Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg took the most heat, with some Senators questioning Chew’s ties to the Chinese Communist Party. (As he articulated many times, he is actually Singaporean.)
Chew’s Congressional opponents are not too happy about his Met Gala invitation, but they can’t deny TikTok’s influence in the fashion world. I can’t wait to see how Chew interprets this year’s Met Gala theme: The Garden of Time.
