Given that it is one of the most A-list events of the year, it’s impossible not to have Hollywood exes and frenemies potentially seated near each other. Remember when Selena Gomez and The Weeknd attended together, as well as his ex Bella Hadid? So it’s likely taken into consideration that, say, Taylor Swift and Katy Perry probably shouldn’t have been at the same table back at the height of their feud. But, ultimately, the overall event trumps any potential tension or rivalries among the attendees.
“You can’t please everybody. We always like to think there’s not a bad [seat] in the house, which really there isn’t. You have to come away confident in the notion that you are doing your best, and that inevitably not everyone will be happy,” Ward Durrett said. “But we have a pretty good track record. The instances are few and far between, and we always try and work more closely with them the next year to manage expectations.”
(In one memorable scene in the First Monday in May, Ward Durrett had placed three Velcro tabs to the side of her seating chart, bluntly telling Wintour, “Those are people I am hoping will go away.”)
Alas, not everyone is happy with their assigned seat, as famed fashion critic Cathy Horn noted in her 2006 piece for The New York Times: “John Lydon, the former Sex Pistol known as Johnny Rotten, found his seat—the last at a long table and arguably one of the least desirable in the highly orchestrated seating plan—he was visibly upset…[he] stormed out twice, cursing museum workers.”
He eventually took his seat.
