Two weeks before the 2023 Met Gala, the team behind the High Fashion Twitter Met Gala tweeted that they would be canceling their usual digital companion event in lieu of the annual Costume Institute Benefit, often dubbed “fashion’s greatest.”

“As the first Monday in May approaches, the hf twitter met gala team would like to announce that we will not be celebrating this year’s met gala due to our values ​​being inconsistent with choosing Karl Lagerfeld as the theme,” the team tweeted road. “We hope to celebrate with our community again soon.”

The group’s reaction is part of a long-running conversation about Lagerfeld’s complicated legacy as an influential designer who also enjoyed questionable anti-fat, racist and misogynist jokes. For Twitter user and HFT Met Gala coordinator @raphlecia, the collective decision not to attend was easy — she didn’t want to glorify a legacy she felt was tainted by toxic sentiment.

“Many of us are actually part of the community that Karl Lagerfeld targeted in his hate speech,” she told TIME. “A lot of the people who attend our events are also part of those communities. It’s not that we don’t acknowledge or deny his legacy, but part of his legacy is the harmful things he says, and we don’t really want to be part of the celebration.”

After the announcement that the late designer was the inspiration for this year’s Met Gala, the discussion around Lagerfeld culminated in Karl Lagerfeld: A Line of Beauty, an exhibit that will feature 150 of Lagerfeld’s designs alongside his original sketches.