Anna Wintour Honored at Tory Burch Breakfast Before Met Gala 2026
met gala 2026 is still days away, but New York City is already filling with the runway-adjacent events that orbit the Costume Art exhibit opening. Tory Burch’s second annual Founder’s Breakfast begins at 8 a.m. sharp and will honor Anna Wintour, giving the weekend a formal industry checkpoint before the first Monday in May.
Tory Burch at 8 a.m.
The breakfast is the clearest signal in the calendar: Burch is using her namesake foundation’s second annual Founder’s Breakfast to put Wintour at the center of the pre-gala circuit. That kind of early start matters because the Met Gala weekend has become a tightly packed schedule of brand events, private dinners, and public-facing programming rather than one isolated red-carpet night.
The city’s roster also includes the return of the King’s Trust Gala, Stella McCartney’s event tied to her new H&M collaboration, and a Fifth Avenue soirée for Anne Hathaway and Erin Walsh’s book, The Art of Intentional Dressing. Together, they turn Manhattan into a sequence of overlapping stops for the same fashion audience, with each host trying to own a different slice of attention before Monday.
SoHo to Chelsea
At 31 East 17th Street, The Not-A-Normal Show opens Friday at 6 p.m. and runs through Sunday evening with over 60 vintage dealers and indie vendors from across the country. In SoHo, the Vogue Café presented by Chase Sapphire Reserve opens to the public from 10 a.m. through Monday and will include a live recording of The Run-Through with Tory Burch in conversation with Nicole Phelps.
Elsewhere, Vogue’s First Friday fete brings Chloe Malle, Simone Ashley, and Teyana Taylor under a dress code labeled Bodies, Bodies, Bodies. Steven Klein is also set to celebrate his birthday at a maximalist venue, while Colman Domingo is throwing his second annual Put That Sh*t On party in Chelsea.
Private invites, public traffic
Invites have also gone out for an event organized by Jeff Bezos and Lauren Bezos, and United Talent Agency is hosting its annual Pre-Met Gala gathering at a ritzy NoMad location. The New York EDITION Hotel is offering a Met Gala-inspired La Mer sculpting treatment, a reminder that the weekend has become a commercial lane as much as a social one.
For readers moving around the city, the practical takeaway is simple: the pre-gala slate is no longer a side note to Monday’s main event. It is the business of attention itself, spread across SoHo, Chelsea, Fifth Avenue, NoMad, and East 17th Street before the Costume Art exhibit opens and the gala begins to pull the whole circuit inward.
