Many of the finer details of Jeff Bezos' lavish 60th birthday party have been revealed by his indiscreet guests. This is despite the fact that Beyoncé, Bill Gates, Oprah and others were instructed to put their phones in sealed bags upon arrival at the billionaire businessman's Beverly Hills mansion.
We're told the menu included caviar and McDonalds (the Amazon founder and space entrepreneur worked at the fast-food chain as a 16-year-old) and the party decor included a photo booth dressed in tribute to the businessman's first office.
But what none of the attendees could resist posting on social media was a photo of their outfit. Dressing according to the prescribed 'celestial space age' theme allowed for some richly varied (but always lavishly expensive) interpretations.
Paris Hilton dazzled in a heavenly crystal Oscar de la Renta gown, one of seven dresses the heiress apparently wore to her 2023 wedding.
Ivanka Trump bought a vintage Roberto Cavalli dress with a spaceship-like, beaded bodice. Prosthetic antennae had grown on Katy Perry's metal forehead.
There were at least a half-dozen sightings of designer label Judith Leiber's new UFO clutch bags - a novelty at $5,000 each.
But it was the host who attracted the most attention. Not Bezos - we don't know what he was wearing, let's assume it was a silver suit. Previously, his wife-to-be Lauren Sánchez, who made sure she was unmissable in a red hot Laura Basci dress and her own custom Leiber rocket bag.
Sánchez organized a photo shoot in her boudoir before the party and surrounded herself with a glamor team of four for the occasion. "Getting ready is sometimes the best part of the night," she told her 398,000 followers on Instagram.
Sánchez's rich feminine look is extremely striking. This isn't stealth wealth style - the kind of subtle take on luxury we've come to associate with the billionaires on television. Succession. Her look is a kind of bling of 'look at me from space' (a-ling a-ling a-ling).
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It is 54-year-old Sánchez, to whom Bezos has been engaged since the spring of 2023, who has apparently brought this previously private billionaire out of his hole. Before Bezos went public with the former news anchor in January 2023, he was married to novelist MacKenzie Scott for 25 years and had rarely set foot on a red carpet.
Sánchez is the party planner in charge, the launching pad of his new social life - she has propelled him to a kind of fame he had never enjoyed before. "She is a star in Jeff's life," said broadcasting billionaire Barry Diller Fashion.
The Bez-Chezes (certainly the portmanteau of choice?) have created their own super-rich club and surrounded themselves with other style-adjacent tycoons - several media agency owners and fashion brand heads (including Tommy Hilfiger) were in attendance, in addition to the Hilton and Kardashian dynasties.
"Jeff Bezos has long been drawn to star power, but his desire for fame seems to have increased since his relationship with Lauren Sanchez began," a Hollywood social insider said. The Telegraph.
They are in all the right places - the guest list for his glamorous birthday is proof of their appeal: billionaire celebrities, tech lords, heirs and political dynasties - together form the essence of power in contemporary America.
The Vanderbilts of the Gilded Age confirmed their status among European couture, posing for black-and-white images printed in the columns of early society. Sanchez and Bezos follow a similar modern formula, joining fashion's power players to ensure visibility.
Bezos and Sánchez spent their first public summer together courting friends like Leonardo DiCaprio on Koru, the former's sailing yacht and the largest in the world. They made their first red carpet appearances as a couple, attended Hollywood parties after the Oscars and at the premiere of the new movie Lord of the Rings on Amazon Prime.
The couple invited American Fashion in their world for the December issue - Sánchez posed in (yet another) gem-encrusted red dress, by Dolce & Gabbana, and posed wrapped around Bezos' engineering feat, his underground 10,000-year clock dug beneath the Sierra Diablo mountains. "Wouldn't it be cool to have a Halloween party? [in] here?" she thought.
As the couple sat front row at Dolce & Gabbana's Fashion Week show in Milan earlier this month, they summed up the internet's favorite fashion trend: the so-called "mobwife" aesthetic. Echoing the leather, diamonds and fur worn by characters like Carmela Soprano, Sánchez saw the moment to highlight her dirty-rich aesthetic and ran with it.
"The mafia woman aesthetic is all about drama," said a spokesperson for the fashion website Zalando. "It addresses several trends seen on the Spring 2024 runways, including faux fur, animal prints and underwear as outerwear. It is the antithesis of minimalism." More is definitely more in this couple's mood.
It is this spirit and sense of fun that has helped the couple capture the attention of the fashion and celebrity crowd. Who doesn't want to go to a billionaire's party?
Then to their wedding. The date is unknown, but rest assured that no expense will be spared.
Sánchez will no doubt evolve her look further by working with her stylist Kelly Johnson (Jennifer Lopez's former stage costume designer) to create her dream wardrobe for the billionaire wife. Carrying your wealth is back. And Sánchez is the woman who stands out.
