After six years away from the Met Gala, Taylor Swift opted to skip the prestigious New York City event again. Her boyfriend Joe Alwyn didn't attend either.
Swift and Alwyn's absence
isn't terribly surprising given the couple's history not of attending the event, the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, and their tendency to keep a very low profile between projects.
The last Met Gala Swift attended, in 2016, is actually the place where Swift has hinted that she met her partner Joe Alwyn in her reputation song “Dress.”
“Flashback when you met me / Your buzzcut and my hair bleached / Even in my worst times, you could see the best of me.” The summer of 2016 was when Kim Kardashian posted Snapchats of Swift and Kanye West's phone call; Swift's hair was bleached blonde for the event, while Alwyn had a buzz cut. Swift would go on to date Tom Hiddleston briefly after the event before getting together with Alwyn in the fall.
Alwyn recently spoke to ELLE UK about he doesn't talk about Swift in interviews. “It's not really [because I] want to be guarded and private, it's more a response to something else,” he said with a shrug. “We live in a culture that is so increasingly intrusive… The more you give—and frankly, even if you don't give it—something will be taken.”
He also addressed engagement rumors to the Wall Street Journal, making it clear he wouldn't personally confirm or deny them. “If I had a pound for every time I think I’ve been told I’ve been engaged, then I’d have a lot of pound coins,” he said. “I mean, the truth is, if the answer was yes, I wouldn’t say, and if the answer was no, I wouldn’t say.”