Opinion
Guest
Essay
The
Bezos-Sánchez Wedding and the Triumph of Tacky
June 25,
2025
By Amy
Odell
Ms. Odell
is the author of “Anna: The Biography.”
Some of
the world’s richest people are gathering for the wedding of Jeff Bezos, the
world’s third-richest man, in one of the world’s most touristy cities, Venice,
and it’s easy to ask: What happened to understatement and restraint? In the
run-up to the wedding, Mr. Bezos was photographed by paparazzi on the deck of
his yacht with his intended, Lauren Sánchez, both in their swimsuits,
frolicking in foam like a couple of college kids on spring break. Meanwhile,
missiles and bombs have been falling just a few time zones away.
Not so
long ago, members of high society were fixated on trying to low-key their way
out of the perils of income inequality. Minimalism and quiet luxury were in
vogue. But in the wake of President Trump’s second election, it’s the luxe life
at full volume. He gilded the White House, turning it into a rococo Liberace
lair. Swaggy and braggy have replaced stealth wealth. Flaunting it is in. For
women, that means sequins, diamonds, tight silhouettes and big hair. TikTok’s
latest star, Becca Bloom, has drawn millions of fans by regularly sharing
videos of her lavish jewelry and Hermès shopping hauls. Even the bandage dress
is trending again. The breast implant business just keeps getting bigger and is
expected to reach $4.6 billion by 2030, up from nearly $3 billion in 2024.
For men,
it means a hypermasculine look: muscles and slicked-back hair; tight, tailored
suits with big Windsor knots.
And now
there are the Bezos-Sánchez nuptials, the most internationally notable
ruling-class wedding since the Ambani-Merchant union last year in India. It’s
already drawn protesters determined to make Venice the city “that did not bend
to oligarchs.” (The couple had to move their main reception to a new location
to avoid activists who threatened to fill the canals with inflatable
crocodiles.) Since news of Mr. Bezos and Ms. Sánchez’s relationship broke in a
tabloid scandal in early 2019, Ms. Sánchez has become an object of public
fascination, her every movement parsed by tabloids and gossipmongers. With this
much attention, she’s become one of the most visible women on (or off, as it
may be) the planet, and therefore a significant fashion influencer.
Her
fiancé, who shed his nerdy image and baggy office clothes for a
personal-trained body, tight polo shirts and aviators, has already been
anointed an unlikely style icon. Like the MAGA bros who favor traditional
suiting and clean-shaven faces, his athleisure emphasizes his power, not
cutting-edge fashion sense.
Ms.
Sánchez, too, dresses to emphasize her clout. She’s long preferred belts with
noticeable-from-a-distance hardware, embellished dresses, stiletto heels,
low-cut necklines, high-cut hemlines and big jewelry. Her engagement ring is
thought to be in the vicinity of 30 carats and to have cost somewhere between
$3 million and $5 million, but it was easily dwarfed by the diamond-encrusted
choker she wore to a gala in Cannes recently, with a stone that looked to be
the size of a bike reflector. There was nothing low-key about her recent
flaunty Paris bachelorette party, which was attended by stars such as Kim
Kardashian and Kris Jenner, and included a visit to the Hermès store with
executives from the brand.
The
luxury industry — which faces its first slowdown in 15 years, according to a
recent study — has economic interest in embracing Ms. Sánchez, who represents
the wealthy Very Important Clients who make up 2 percent of luxury customers
and 40 percent of sales. “The customer driving global luxury is quite tacky in
a lot of cases, and no one really admits it,” an unnamed fashion investor told
The Cut for a 2024 article about this crucial group of shoppers. V.I.C.s are
always looking for a reason to get decked out in their designer finest, social
norms and sensitivities be damned, and Ms. Sánchez seems to embody the idea
that if you’re rich enough, you may as well.
What has
fascinated the public about Ms. Sánchez, like any number of women who personify
a certain period, is how she puts herself together. Seemingly unafraid to flout
sartorial norms, she attended a state dinner at the White House in 2024 wearing
a gown with a sheer lace corseted bodice, causing People to wonder if the dress
broke “White House protocol.” She later attended Mr. Trump’s inauguration with
what looked like lingerie peeking out of her white blazer, leaving a Vogue
headline to note that she “forgoes inauguration style codes.” She never
conformed to the look of oversize minimalism popularized in the 2010s by the
designer Phoebe Philo for Céline, still revered by elite crowds who live in
places like Manhattan and Montecito, Calif., and fancy themselves practitioners
of good taste.
Ms.
Sánchez’s journey from the tabloids to the pages of Vogue, which did a splashy
feature on her in its December 2023 issue, has fascinated and repelled
onlookers, the same way Ms. Kardashian’s entree to the magazine — and therefore
to the fashion world — did when she landed on its cover for the first time in
April 2014, pegged to her marriage to Kanye West. Ms. Kardashian had been a
tabloid star for many years, but until that point, Vogue hadn’t been featuring
her much.
After the
cover dropped, people threatened to cancel their subscriptions. But it was a
provocation worth making, Vogue’s editor in chief, Anna Wintour, later said. “I
was told that it was trashy, that it was beneath us, what was Vogue coming to?”
she recalled. “We were trying to respond to what we saw — a couple being [an]
undeniable force in our culture, and they were part of the conversation at that
time.” The same could be said about Ms. Sánchez and Mr. Bezos now.
Unsurprisingly, Vogue has reportedly been talking with the couple about an
exclusive.
Ms.
Sánchez brings to mind another unlikely Vogue subject: Ivana Trump. Ms. Wintour
gave her a cover in 1990, shortly before her divorce from Mr. Trump, after
worrying, as I reported in a biography of Ms. Wintour, that she was “too
tacky.” Around the time the cover came out, Ms. Trump was criticized for
“dressing like a Christmas tree.” The issue’s newsstand sales of 750,000 copies
easily justified Ms. Wintour’s decision.
As much
as those with more understated taste might turn up their noses at the crassness
of the Bezos-Sánchez wedding’s display, tacky is very clearly carrying the day.
Maybe hating on tacky oligarchs is itself just elitist. It’s doubtful anyone
attending the wedding cares very much what those of us who weren’t invited
think, anyway.
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