Tonight Jeff Bezos, a man generally pictured in jeans, jackets and no tie, will stand at the top of the grand staircase of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in a tuxedo, shoulder-to-shoulder with designer Miuccia Prada and Vogue editor Anna Wintour, as hundreds of women on ballgowns pause to pay him obeisance (or just shake his hand).

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Who would have thought? I mean, let’s just compare the picture at left to the one of Anna Winour at least year’s gala below, and you’ll see what I mean.

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Amazon is the corporate sponsor of the Met ball, aka the event of the NY social season, which brings in about $10m annually to support the Costume Institute. No one ever wants to tell how much money the headline sponsor pays for this, but a source at PPR, which underwrote last year’s exhibit on Alexander McQueen, says it’s about a million.

Anyway, Amazon’s involvement is interesting. I think it speaks to the growing belief among the tech and fashion worlds that online is the treasure chest of the future, even if no one if sure what shape it will take, and it also suggests a desire to go upmarket on the part of what most consider, as William Susman told WWD recently, a virtual “Walmart.” Amazon has a fashion site, after all — myhabit.com – but of the 30 women’s sales currently being held, only seven are what they call “designer”.

Sponsoring the Met will give Mr Bezos instant entree with pretty much any high-fashion creative director he desires to meet. He’s scratching their back by supporting their industry cultural cause. Someday they may need to scratch his.