Snobbery, money and a little fashion in a world where everything can be bought. Even prestige.
In circles where parties start with Dom Pérignon and end with auctions to buy an island with a helipad, ordinary wedding gifts already trump plebeian trash. That's why Jeff Bezos, a man who has made a religion out of wealth and an extreme sport out of vanity, has reportedly decided to gift his newly married Lauren Sánchez something more spectacular than another yacht or a diamond weighing a small child. Namely: the entire Condé Nast, that is, bundled with “Vogue,” “Vanity Fair,” “GQ” and all the other trinkets that once molded the taste of the upper class, but today are more like props for Instagram millionaires pretending to still read. Because, after all, power without control over the taste of the masses is incomplete power. In a package for billions, one can get not only fashion bibles, but also remnants of the snobbish aura that once meant more than a photo with a tag on social media. Bezos apparently decided that since he had bought himself Lauren Sánchez, it was now time to make her a gift as elegant as a diamond necklace - only more visible in the press.
Lauren Sánchez, who in the American imaginary still functions somewhere between former weatherman and billionaire fantasy pilot, has just landed on the cover of Vogue. And while her presence in the July issue could be, for some, another example of how shamelessly the elite can lash out at each other, this time there's something even more brazen about it. Rumor has it that it wasn't fashion, style or any other aesthetic value that planted her on this cover, but simple calculation. The Newhouse family, owners of Condé Nast, supposedly decided it was better to suck up to Bezos in advance. After all, New York has been buzzing with rumors of the publishing house's activity dying down - and that usually means one thing: preparations for a sale. In this theater of prestige and money, Lauren is no longer just the billionaire's wife. She is a pawn in the game of who gets control of the last bastion of paper vanity.
Anna Wintour, of course, also entered the scene of this farce. An icon, a despot, a living relic of good taste, who is now, supposedly, subtly playing up the sale as if it were a horse-swapping transaction at a village market, only with stilettos from Manolo Blahnik. She was the one to pull Lauren by the hand and say, “there you go, dear, Vogue is for you, as long as Jeff pays for it.” Can you imagine a more elegant betrayal of fashion ideals? After all, even Anna Wintour, once the guardian of aesthetic superiority, knows that money smells as good as the most expensive perfume - and Bezos is, after all, a walking fragrance of “cashmere and capital.” She probably did so not because she saw her as a style icon, but because she knows well what big money smells like - and Bezos is a walking bill in human skin. It is said that Anna is not only brokering this potential deal, but also stands to gain a lot from the sale herself. After so many years of power over fashion, maybe it's finally time for a transfer that will set her up for old age - even if it means putting the bible of fashion in the hands of a man for whom the difference between Prada and Primark is probably less obvious than between one model of space rocket and another.
Imagine for a moment this future Vogue: a special issue, sponsored by Amazon Prime, with QR codes in place of traditional ads, with tutorials from Lauren Sánchez on how to pose on Instagram with filters that make everyone's face worthy of the cover. Instead of fragrant pages with perfume samples - links to online shopping, with free delivery in two days. Fashion, which used to be an expression of individuality, will eventually become a Prime product: fast, glossy and completely without a soul.
Or is that exactly the point? Bezos, the man who turned bookstores into magazines full of everything, can now do the same with fashion. “Vogue” will no longer be a guide to good taste, but a catalog of what it takes to pretend to know fashion. And Lauren? Lauren will be the symbol of this change: the face of a world where prestige can be clicked on, ordered and delivered to your door - as long as it's fast, as long as it comes in a glossy package.
A vision of “Vogue” under Bezos' rule? Funny, if one likes black humor. Paper pages turned into an Amazon Luxury catalog, haute couture ads replaced with links to shopping with 24-hour delivery, and a sample of the issue could be a complimentary discount code for Prime Plus. In the column “what to wear this season” - Lauren Sánchez's guide: how to choose leggings to deck a megayacht.
The question is whether this is still the world of fashion, or already just elegantly packaged logistics for the nouveau riche. But well, as the old New York elite say: if you have enough money, even prestige can be bought in a package with free delivery.
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