Although the Met Gala serves as a branding occasion for Vogue, it has lengthy accepted sponsorships from the tech giants which have threatened the very survival of legacy media publications.
Jeff Bezos, the Amazon founder, appeared because the ball’s honorary chair in 2012. Four years later, when Apple was a Met Gala sponsor, its chief government, Tim Cook, confirmed up in tux and tails. And Instagram equipped money in 2022.
The 2024 occasion is sponsored, partly, by TikTok, the social media goliath whose future appears to be like murkier than that of Condé Nast, the writer of Vogue, The New Yorker and different magazines, which has laid off staff and shuttered or offered off a few of its publications lately.
TikTok discovered itself in jeopardy final month, when President Biden signed a invoice that gave ByteDance, the Chinese firm that owns TikTok, 9 months to dump the app or face a ban within the United States. In the wake of that political firestorm, Shou Chew, the 41-year-old chief government of TikTok, is predicted to affix dozens of celeb company on the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Manhattan on Monday night.
He was chosen by Anna Wintour as an honorary chair for the profit, which raises tens of hundreds of thousands of {dollars} annually for the museum’s Costume Institute. Ms. Wintour, the worldwide editorial director of Condé Nast and the editor in chief of Vogue, has run the occasion for 1 / 4 of a century, utilizing her sense of celeb and trend synergy to create a splashy showcase of among the world’s most influential individuals, a gaggle that has come to incorporate extra social media influencers and fewer one-name stars (Beyoncé, Lady Gaga, Madonna) lately.
TikTok could also be loathed by Washington lawmakers who’ve raised considerations in regards to the Chinese authorities’s entry to its 170 hundreds of thousands customers within the United States, but it surely stays an simple cultural power in American life, particularly amongst Gen Z. The app can also be a trend power, and the Met Gala gives many TikTok creators with loads of fodder. That makes the little-known Mr. Chew a minimum of as highly effective because the way more recognizable co-chairs of this 12 months’s occasion — Zendaya, Jennifer Lopez, Bad Bunny, Chris Hemsworth and Ms. Wintour herself.
Along with TikTok, the luxurious trend model Loewe is a sponsor; its inventive director, Jonathan Anderson, will serve alongside Mr. Chew as an honorary chair.
TikTok declined to disclose its monetary contribution to the star-studded occasion. In earlier years, a sponsor is thought to have kicked in roughly $5 million.
Mr. Bezos and Mr. Cook have been identified portions after they greeted the likes of Rihanna and Beyoncé at earlier Met Galas. Mr. Chew, alternatively, is more likely to go unrecognized by a lot of the gawkers who line up behind the barricades alongside Fifth Avenue, a lot of whom could also be making TikTok movies on their telephones.
A Charm Offensive
Starting in 2022, when U.S. lawmakers have been turning up the warmth on TikTok, the corporate modified its public relations technique. Instead of maintaining a low profile, it launched into a allure offensive, with the fresh-faced Shou (pronounced “show”) Chew entrance and middle.
As TikTok plowed hundreds of thousands into its lobbying efforts, Mr. Chew met with the heads of assume tanks in Washington and world leaders on the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. At The New York Times’s DealBook convention in November 2022, he fielded questions on nationwide safety considerations whereas carrying denims, an off-the-cuff blue blazer over a white T-shirt, and white sneakers that appeared recent out of the field.
His anticipated look on the Met Gala — as soon as a staid affair for New York blue bloods that has turn into an East Coast Oscars on Ms. Wintour’s watch — will be seen as a part of TikTok’s shift in the way it presents itself to the general public. But this time round, as a substitute of sitting down with those that have affect over issues of coverage, the TikTok chief will likely be standing on a purple carpet earlier than a squadron of photographers.
Mr. Chew, who declined by way of a TikTok consultant to be interviewed for this text, grew up in Singapore. That is the place he has his primary residence along with his spouse, Vivian Kao, 42, a onetime Goldman Sachs affiliate, and their three kids. In 2021, the couple spent greater than $60 million on a home within the Queen Astrid Park space of the island nation, in line with The Business Times of Singapore.
The household is extremely non-public. A uncommon glimpse of Ms. Kao and one among their kids appeared in a video that Mr. Chew posted on TikTok from a current Taylor Swift live performance at Singapore National Stadium.
Mr. Chew has stated that his father labored in building and that his mom was a bookkeeper. After attending one among Singapore’s high secondary colleges, he accomplished two years of obligatory nationwide service within the Singapore Armed Forces, the place he was an officer. From there, he enrolled at University College London.
After graduating in 2006 with a level in economics, he took a job within the London workplace of Goldman Sachs. That was the place he met Nathalie du Preez, who stays a buddy of his.
“We sat on the same floor, and he was walking past,” Ms. du Preez recalled in a telephone interview.
In an early dialog, they discovered that that they had each utilized to Harvard Business School. They took espresso breaks collectively at Leonidas Chocolates across the nook from the workplace.
When they arrived at Harvard within the fall of 2008, Ms. du Preez and Mr. Chew shared a journey with a gaggle of individuals sure for Ikea. They have been simply two of the various college students looking out for moderately priced residence décor objects.
“He’s come a long way since then,” she stated.
Ms. du Preez and several other different Harvard Business School classmates interviewed for this text recalled Mr. Chew as somebody who was humorous, though they may not recall a particular humorous factor he had stated. They additionally agreed that he was razor-sharp, however provided no explicit examples of his acuity.
They described him as inquisitive about popular culture and sports activities, saying he was a fan of Manchester United and recalling that he had attended a David Guetta present on the Roxy in Boston. They talked about that he appreciated video video games, together with the soccer sport FIFA, and famous that he was the tidiest of his roommates.
Mr. Chew met the girl who would turn into his spouse, Ms. Kao, after they have been each at Harvard Business School. A graduate of Wellesley College, she had grown up in Bethesda, Md., and is Taiwanese American.
Mr. Chew and Ms. Kao discovered themselves in enterprise faculty because the monetary disaster arrived. “We called it the ‘just in time’ admissions class, because the markets crashed that fall,” Caren Kelleher, a fellow classmate, stated in an interview.
Although it was a time when massive banks have been failing, a few of Mr. Chew’s fellow enterprise college students have been shocked when he took a summer season internship at Facebook, fairly than going into finance. The social media firm was solely 5 years outdated and years away from going public.
His classmates later realized he had made a prescient selection, in line with Jean Abillama, who lived throughout the road from Mr. Chew in Cambridge, Mass. “He was seeing this big wave of tech and e-commerce, the tech wave coming to light,” she stated.
Master’s diploma in hand, he joined DST Global, a enterprise capital agency led by Yuri Milner, a Russian billionaire who was on his approach to turning into one of the vital essential non-public traders in Silicon Valley firms. Mr. Chew served as Mr. Milner’s level man in China, the place he helped lead investments in Alibaba and the Chinese ride-sharing service DiDi.
During that point, Mr. Milner offered a reported $10 million in financing to a news-aggregation app based by the entrepreneur Zhang Yiming, who developed a rapport with Mr. Chew. The app would turn into ByteDance. Mr. Chew additionally helped with DST Global’s funding in Xiaomi, one among China’s largest telephone producers.
In 2013, Mr. Chew and Ms. Kao have been married. Two years later, Mr. Chew left DST to turn into the chief monetary officer of Xiaomi, which he helped take public in 2018.
He Got the Job
Mr. Chew was named the chief monetary officer of ByteDance in March 2021. He ascended to the highest TikTok job two months later. In November of that 12 months, he stepped down as ByteDance’s chief monetary officer.
TikTok’s earlier chief government, Kevin Mayer, had resigned after lower than 4 months on the job, citing the growing stress placed on the corporate by the Trump administration due to its ties to China.
The opposition of U.S. lawmakers didn’t abate throughout the presidency of Joseph R. Biden Jr. As Mr. Chew labored to maintain lawmakers at bay, he discovered time to attend the 2022 Met Gala with Ms. Kao. He went all-out formal, in conventional white tie and tails; she wore a resplendent floral-patterned robe.
Nowadays, Ms. Kao runs Tamarind Global, a household workplace that, in line with its web site, “manages investments and philanthropy” for a “Singaporean family.” Its shareholders embrace Mr. Chew and a belief linked to Mr. Chew and Ms. Kao, in line with public information.
There has been debate about whether or not Mr. Chew — who travels with a small safety element — is the controlling power at TikTok. Company sources have instructed The Times that main strategic selections have been dealt with by Mr. Yiming, amongst others.
Mr. Chew displayed a way of enjoyable in his TikTok deal with — @shou.time — which riffs on the pronunciation of his first identify. But the account didn’t have a lot of a following till March 2023, when he was grilled by Congress.
Under aggressive questioning, Mr. Chew was made to repeat that he was a citizen of Singapore, not China. He went on to emphasize that TikTok was not managed by the Chinese Communist Party and famous that his spouse is an American, telling his questioners, “By the way, she was just born a few miles away from here.”
That was the looks that catapulted him into public consciousness. Before the listening to, he had fewer than 20,000 TikTok followers. He now has 3.9 million.
Users posted clips highlighting belligerent questions from lawmakers. A lot of TikTokers even referred to as Mr. Chew “zaddy,” a slang time period that refers to an older, enticing man.
On Nov. 8, 2023, TikTok introduced that it might function “the lead sponsor” of this 12 months’s Metropolitan Museum of Art Costume Institute Benefit, the formal identify of the Met Gala. Days after the announcement, Vogue Singapore printed a uncommon sit-down interview with Mr. Chew.
He was photographed in Louis Vuitton denims and a velvet Brunello Cucinelli blazer, and he spoke benignly about his obligatory service in Singapore’s armed forces in “the jungles of Brunei” and doing diaper obligation for a 3rd time. “There’s quite an age gap between this kid and the previous kid,” he stated within the interview. “My wife and I are relearning everything, like changing diapers.”
Along with different high tech executives, Mr. Chew was referred to as earlier than Congress once more in January. He pressured that he didn’t dwell in China and stated he was not a member of the Chinese Communist Party.
While turning down interview requests from information organizations digging into TikTok’s Chinese ties, Mr. Chew gave an interview to a different Condé Nast publication, Wired, throughout a TikTok music competition in Mesa, Ariz., in December 2023.
The Wired article largely saved the deal with TikTok’s pop-culture footprint whereas seeming to defend it in opposition to its American critics by arguing that “a thinly veiled anti-Chinese xenophobia has become a reliable part of the U.S. political playbook.” It additionally included an advance plug for Mr. Chew’s look on the Met Gala.
“It’s very cultural,” Mr. Chew instructed Wired. “Fashion is an incredibly important part of TikTok. Louis Vuitton has 12 million followers on our app.” (The designer now has greater than 13 million TikTok followers.)
Ms. du Preez, the Goldman Sachs colleague and Harvard classmate, stated she was not shocked that Mr. Chew could be involved in teaming up with Vogue and Ms. Wintour, significantly at a time when the corporate he leads is making an attempt to point out that it isn’t managed by China.
“The Met Gala is an incredibly well-followed evening,” she stated. “In terms of making friends in the U.S., I think it would make sense to do that, and everyone who is going will have a TikTok account.”
Not that she anticipated him to pick a memorable ensemble.
“I have no doubt Vivian will dress him in something beautiful,” Ms. du Preez stated. “And at this point he can get a lot of advice from anyone about what to wear. I’m sure Anna Wintour can give him tips.”
For the report, Mr. Chew is slated to put on one thing from Ralph Lauren, the American designer whose fondness for purple, white and blue has made him a pure option to outfit U.S. Olympics groups in patriotic garb.
Ryan Mac contributed reporting. Kirsten Noyes contributed analysis.