The Met Gala has come and gone! The fashion event of the year lets us see if our A-list favs will become icons or flop in front of everyone. However, over the last two Met Galas there has been an increase in non-A-listers, more specifically influencers. While they are still greatly outnumbered by the Rihanna’s at the event, this Met Gala there were exponentially more of them.

The idea of influencers at the Met Gala, the fashion olympics, truly disturbed me at first. I asked myself, “ How did Anna Wintour approve Addison Rae’s invitation to the event of the year?” I was unequivocally opposed to the idea at first because I couldn’t see how people on the for you page’s of thirteen year olds had contributed to fashion within their short tenure as influencers. Nevertheless, the more I looked into all the influencers invited this year one could say I have a changed perspective. In fact, this is the case for influencers at the Met Gala.

The 2019 Met Gala was the first time we truly saw influencers hit the carpet with Liza Koshy and James Charles being the most prominent influencer guests. While you could argue that the Kardashian Klan are the first “influencers” to grace the Met Gala, I believe they are in a category all on their own (thank you Kris Jenner)! The influencers we saw in 2019 were very big at the time, but their impact on the Gala in general was fairly limited as they were greatly outnumbered by the film and music stars we typically see. The Met was dipping their toes into the influencer water one could say by trying to see how audiences would react to their presence. For me personally, I wouldn’t say that the 2019 influencer attendees were that impactful on the event because until I started writing this I vaguely remembered James Charles’s horrendous outfit and had completely forgotten Koshy had even attended. That’s why this year there was a true shift.

2020 and 2021 have been a lot. From music to movies a lot of them have pushed back released dates to later this year or next year and red carpet events have been extremely limited with the first large one being the Grammy’s earlier this year. “Real” celebrities have been in many ways cut off from us the past year and a half, yet influencers who have mastered the interwebs worked throughout the pandemic becoming closer with fans and showing us that shits been weird for them too. They are the people that distracted us from the monotony of quarantine life and let us escape into their lives. Going back even further though, for many Gen Z people we grew up on the internet and came into our own by seeing these people express their identities openly online.

For example, the Try Guys have been on the internet for almost a decade and two years ago Eugene released one of the most visually and emotionally impactful coming out videos I’ve seen on the internet. Eugene Lee Yang has also always been a fashion icon and is probably partially responsible for the development of my own style. On the beauty end, Jackie Aina was someone I used to always watch and would recommend her to anyone I came into contact with at one point. Jackie was integral to my early teenage experimentation with makeup and taught me how to feel beautiful as a young black girl. Eugene and Jackie were only two of the influencers invited this year, but I know the impact they made on a lot of people is bigger than most of the A listers we see on the carpet year after year.

The glamour of Hollywood and celebrity as a concept is what has kept the Met Gala so exclusive for years. Even though I love to see my celebrity favorites show out on the carpet every year, I would say many of them have had less impact than the influencers we saw this year like Eugene, Jackie, Emma Chamberlain, and NikkiTutorials. Emma Chamberlain has single handedly changed how many young people approach fashion and has become a model for many to follow. She has proved herself in the industry with her magazine covers, fashion week looks, and her collabs with Louis Vuitton. Influencers have had to fight for their seats at the fashion table even when they are the people that bring fashion to the masses. In the state of the internet today, we are more likely to be inspired by what people like Emma are wearing more than Donatella Versace. So, yes the Met Gala should allow influencers to be at the event. I admit they are not the household names we wait for every year, but an entire generation knows who they are and have properly been influenced by them for years. They deserve to be there.

The Case for Influencers at the Met Gala