Sam Bankman-Fried lost on Storybook Brawl during chat with Anna Wintour before saying he’d go to Met Gala then not showing up – causing her team to vow he’ll ‘never step foot in fashion again’

Vogue chief Anna Wintour vowed never to let Sam Bankman-Fried ‘set foot in fashion’ again after the former crypto billionaire turned down her invitation to the Met Gala.

The interaction was revealed in Michael Lewis’ new book “Going Infinite,” which chronicles the dramatic rise and fall of Bankman-Fried and his cryptocurrency exchange FTX.

When Bankman-Fried was riding high as the world’s richest person under 30 in early 2022, an ill-fated Zoom meeting with Wintour saw him agree to be her special guest at the swanky gala – even though he ‘didn’t know who she was ‘. .’

The book explains how Bankman-Fried secretly played video games while talking to Wintour, responding “yes” to everything she said, including the possibility of self-financing the entire Met Gala.

But after the meeting ended ‘warmly’, Bankman-Fried commented that he would ‘definitely be out of place there’, and accepted his invitation without informing Wintour’s team until the day before the event was held.

The recently released book by Lewis, famed author of The Big Short, offers a close-up look at Bankman-Fried’s bombastic lifestyle before his exchange collapsed, leading to his arrest and subsequent fraud trial this week.

His manic behavior, constantly doing “multiple things at once,” was on full display in his online encounter with Wintour, where he knew almost nothing about her other than that she ran a magazine.

Bankman-Fried switched between his favorite game Storybook Brawl and Wintour, and despite his seemingly rude mannerisms, Wintour apparently “warmed him.”

The billionaire first opened a prepared memo with brief facts about Wintour when he met her, Lewis writes, and his eyes darted across the screen as he played the game in the background.

All the while he was seemingly aware that their early friendliness was building toward “the reason for the call.”

The reason was Wintour’s Met Gala, but the promise of a glamorous, A-lister-filled bash clearly didn’t catch Bankman-Fried’s attention the way Storybook Brawl did.

“Sam only had a few seconds to organize his force. He had to concentrate. Anna Wintour made that impossible,” Lewis said, noting that Wintour asked him for details about his lucrative political donations.

Wintour was looking for Bankman-Fried to join her on the red carpet, where he would create a buzz around the event while getting the trade-off of being introduced to legions of potential female clients.

Up until that point, Lewis noted that much of FTX’s users and marketing had been aimed at men.

During their transactional meeting, Wintour reportedly suggested that Bankman-Fried pay for “the whole shindig,” while also urging him to meet her favorite political heavyweight: Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.

After agreeing to appear on the red carpet with Wintour, Lewis said it was obvious he “hadn’t really thought about it.”

This attitude persisted until the week of the gala, although after his Zoom call with the Vogue editor he said he understood it could be a “difficult needle to thread.”

While he ran his FTX platform – and allegedly funneled money to his hedge fund Alameda Research, for which he is currently on trial – Bankman-Fried’s team assumed he would participate in the event.

He cited his “disdain” for fashion and denounced Wintour behind the scenes as one of the “few companies I have strong moral objections to.” Still, the promise of engaging millions of people by coming to the event was almost enough.

FTX’s marketing team, which had already pushed Bankman-Fried to broaden his company’s PR scope, “talked to Louis Vuitton about creating a red carpet-worthy version of Sam’s T-shirt and cargo shorts look.”

Lewis added that other FTX employees also recruited Tom Ford to design “a more conventional outfit, complete with sixty-five thousand dollar cufflinks.”

Ultimately, however, he decided not to attend, in a manner that was apparently more of a non-decision to stay in his cargo shorts than to deliberately upset Wintour.

His PR chief Natalie Tien was apparently prepared to abandon Wintour’s team, but was surprised to receive an angry response from the Vogue boss.

“They called me and screamed and said Sam would never set foot in fashion again,” Natalie said, in an incident reminiscent of Meryl Streep’s hard-hitting portrayal of Wintour in the hit film Devil Wears Prada.

Lewis concluded that although the discussion between Wintour and Bankman-Fried ended hostilely, it paled in comparison to the countless times he pressured his own team with bizarre, last-minute decisions, such as quitting speaking at the World Economic Forum the evening before.

The book adds that Bankman-Fried acted with apparent impunity, and that the “general rule of life” among those at FTX was that “Sam had to be Sam.”

Bankman-Fried’s alleged frivolous behavior led him to make a slew of political donations, real estate purchases and lavish lifestyle choices, funded in part by a scheme that prosecutors say was “one of the largest frauds in American history.” used to be.

The 31-year-old faced a jury for the first time this week on charges that he embezzled from FTX clients to support his hedge fund Alameda Research.

He launched the company in 2019 and it quickly grew into an enterprise worth tens of billions of dollars. Bankman-Fried recruited A-list celebrities from Tom Brady to Larry David to promote the company and also worked with prominent politicians such as Bill Clinton.

But the company suffered a catastrophic collapse in November 2022, leaving customers about $10 billion out of pocket, prosecutors allege. The saga shocked the markets and tarnished SBF’s once godly reputation within the crypto industry.

His ex-girlfriend and former top lieutenant, Caroline Ellison, 29, is expected to make a tense trial as the prosecution’s key witness.