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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 govt, Tim Cook, confirmed up in tux and tails. And Instagram provided money in 2022.
The 2024 occasion is sponsored, partially, by TikTok, the social media goliath whose future appears murkier than that of Condé Nast, the writer of Vogue, The New Yorker and different magazines, which has laid off workers and shuttered or bought off a few of its publications in recent times.
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 govt of TikTok, is anticipated to affix dozens of movie star friends 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 tens of millions 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 movie star and style synergy to create a splashy showcase of a few of the world’s most influential folks, a gaggle that has come to incorporate extra social media influencers and fewer one-name stars (Beyoncé, Lady Gaga, Madonna) in recent times.
TikTok could also be loathed by Washington lawmakers who’ve raised considerations in regards to the Chinese authorities’s entry to its 170 tens of millions customers within the United States, nevertheless it stays an plain cultural power in American life, particularly amongst Gen Z. The app can also be a style power, and the Met Gala offers many TikTok creators with loads of fodder. That makes the little-known Mr. Chew at the least as highly effective because the far more recognizable co-chairs of this yr’s party — Zendaya, Jennifer Lopez, Bad Bunny, Chris Hemsworth and Ms. Wintour herself.
Along with TikTok, the posh style 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 understood to have kicked in roughly $5 million.
Mr. Bezos and Mr. Cook have been recognized portions once they greeted the likes of Rihanna and Beyoncé at earlier Met Galas. Mr. Chew, alternatively, is prone to go unrecognized by a lot of the gawkers who line up behind the barricades alongside Fifth Avenue, lots 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 holding a low profile, it launched into a appeal offensive, with the fresh-faced Shou (pronounced “present”) Chew entrance and heart.
As TikTok plowed tens of millions into its lobbying efforts, Mr. Chew met with the heads of suppose tanks in Washington and international 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 sporting denims, an off-the-cuff blue blazer over a white T-shirt, and white sneakers that seemed contemporary out of the field.
His anticipated look on the Met Gala — as soon as a staid affair for New York blue bloods that has change into an East Coast Oscars on Ms. Wintour’s watch — might 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 might be standing on a crimson carpet earlier than a squadron of photographers.
Mr. Chew, who declined by means of a TikTok consultant to be interviewed for this text, grew up in Singapore. That is the place he has his foremost residence together 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 accordance with The Business Times of Singapore.
The household is extremely non-public. A uncommon glimpse of Ms. Kao and considered one of their kids appeared in a video that Mr. Chew posted on TikTok from a latest 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 considered one of Singapore’s prime 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 pal of his.
“We sat on the identical ground, and he was strolling previous,” Ms. du Preez recalled in a cellphone interview.
In an early dialog, they discovered that that they had each utilized to Harvard Business School. They took coffee 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 trip with a gaggle of individuals certain for Ikea. They have been simply two of the numerous college students looking out for moderately priced dwelling décor gadgets.
“He’s come a great distance since then,” she stated.
Ms. du Preez and a number of 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 supplied no specific examples of his acuity.
They described him as interested by 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 favored video video games, together with the soccer recreation FIFA, and famous that he was the tidiest of his roommates.
Mr. Chew met the lady who would change into his spouse, Ms. Kao, once 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 college because the monetary disaster arrived. “We known as it the ‘simply in time’ admissions class, as a result of the markets crashed that fall,” Caren Kelleher, a fellow classmate, stated in an interview.
Although it was a time when large 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, slightly 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 alternative, in accordance with Jean Abillama, who lived throughout the road from Mr. Chew in Cambridge, Mass. “He was seeing this large wave of tech and e-commerce, the tech wave coming to gentle,” 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 technique to turning into one of the crucial necessary non-public buyers in Silicon Valley corporations. 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 change into ByteDance. Mr. Chew additionally helped with DST Global’s funding in Xiaomi, considered one of China’s largest cellphone producers.
In 2013, Mr. Chew and Ms. Kao have been married. Two years later, Mr. Chew left DST to change 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 yr, he stepped down as ByteDance’s chief monetary officer.
TikTok’s earlier chief govt, 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 in the course of 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 accordance with its web site, “manages investments and philanthropy” for a “Singaporean household.” Its shareholders embody Mr. Chew and a belief linked to Mr. Chew and Ms. Kao, in accordance with public data.
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 best way, she was simply born just a few miles away from right 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. Numerous TikTokers even known as Mr. Chew “zaddy,” a slang time period that refers to an older, engaging man.
On Nov. 8, 2023, TikTok introduced that it could function “the lead sponsor” of this yr’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 responsibility for a 3rd time. “There’s fairly an age hole between this child and the earlier child,” he stated within the interview. “My spouse and I are relearning every little thing, like altering diapers.”
Along with different prime tech executives, Mr. Chew was known as earlier than Congress once more in January. He confused that he didn’t reside 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 pageant in Mesa, Ariz., in December 2023.
The Wired article largely stored the give attention to 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 change into a dependable a 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 extremely necessary a 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 keen on teaming up with Vogue and Ms. Wintour, notably at a time when the corporate he leads is attempting to indicate that it isn’t managed by China.
“The Met Gala is an extremely well-followed night,” she stated. “In phrases of creating mates within the U.S., I believe it could make sense to try this, and everybody who’s going may have a TikTok account.”
Not that she anticipated him to pick a memorable ensemble.
“I’ve little question Vivian will costume him in one thing stunning,” Ms. du Preez stated. “And at this level he can get a number of recommendation from anybody about what to put on. I’m positive Anna Wintour may give him suggestions.”
For the report, Mr. Chew is slated to put on one thing from Ralph Lauren, the American designer whose fondness for crimson, 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.
