Last year Anna Wintour made us believe that she was handing the keys to the Vogue kingdom to journalist Chloe Malle when she stepped away from her role as editor of the magazine, but the real power play was just a click away.
When celebrities arrive for this year’s Met Gala, Vogue’s annual festival of fashion, their host won’t be Malle but honorary chairs, billionaire Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and his wife Lauren Sanchez Bezos.
A look at the queues outside any luxury store, where the aesthetic is more Glassons than Gucci, shows that money can’t buy you taste. But for a reported $US10 million fee ($13.9 million) it has placed the Bezoses at the head table of an event once seen as the pinnacle of creative clothing expression.
On the guest list the newlyweds have positioned themselves alongside fellow co-chairs Wintour, Beyoncé Knowles-Carter, Nicole Kidman and Venus Williams, and ahead of committee members such as Lena Dunham, Sabrina Carpenter, Doja Cat and Australian actress Elizabeth Debicki.
As the Met Gala’s benefactors, Jeff and Lauren are officially in Vogue, altering our understanding of the word. The magazine has always focused on the elite, the rich and the royal, with a smattering of cultural bohemia, but it used to apply a filter of taste, good or otherwise, to its decisions.
Taste was the decision to have had Princess Diana and Catherine, Princess of Wales, on the cover of the British edition, but never Sarah Ferguson.
Taste was the championing of unconventional models such as Twiggy and Kate Moss, and far too belatedly introducing undeniably beautiful models of colour to its covers, such as Donyale Luna in British Vogue in 1966, and Beverly Johnson in US Vogue in 1974.
It’s the celebration of Pat McGrath’s make-up artistry, designer Marc Jacobs’ creativity, and the fantasy of living in a world where your surroundings are constantly seducing you with style.
Taste is not placing the Bezoses, with their estimated wealth of $US230 billion, as ideals of aesthetic aspiration.
Lauren Sanchez Bezos has a bombshell take on fashion that has been compared to former Vogue cover star Sophia Loren. With a consistently cinched waist and spilling cleavage, whether the outfit is Schiaparelli or Dolce & Gabbana, it is closer to that of brash pin-up Jayne Mansfield, who famously made Loren gape with her daring decolletage in a 1957 photograph by Joe Shere.
Even the form-fitting spacesuit by Monse that Lauren Bezos wore with Katy Perry for the space flight on Jeff’s Blue Origin in April last year was better suited to a Pussycat Dolls revival tour, rather than space exploration.
For the Met Gala, Lauren, a former journalist, has reportedly been working with Zendaya’s stylist Law Roach, who attended the Bezoses’ pre-Met Gala party in New York on Sunday night.
Jeff Bezos is now your signature reformed tech bro, looking like he occasionally visits a pec deck at the gym and a peptide provider, before layering stealth wealth basics from Brunello Cucinelli and finishing the ensemble with aviator sunglasses.
It’s hardly the elegant exuberance of stylist Andre Leon Talley, who ruled the Met Gala in voluminous capes before his death, or designer Tom Ford’s disciplined silhouettes.
If the Bezoses were known for their personal style or elegant hosting, instead of foam parties on their $500 million yacht, it might seem less gauche.
In an era when fashion is increasingly concerned with the labour conditions behind the manufacturing of luxury products, having the rulers of Amazon, a company that has repeatedly been scrutinised for worker conditions, is an uncomfortable fit.
There have been similar perplexing decisions by Vogue in the past that raised the eyebrows of those who retain forehead mobility. In 2011 the magazine ran a glowing profile of disgraced Syrian president Bashar al-Assad’s wife Asma, carrying the headline “A rose in the desert” and calling Mrs Assad “the freshest and most magnetic of first ladies” just as the Arab spring was beginning.
In 2005 Vogue featured the future Melania Trump on the cover, accompanied by a feature on her shopping for a Christian Dior wedding dress for her marriage to Donald Trump.
Taste is fickle. Melania has not featured on the cover again.
Lauren Sanchez Bezos appeared on Vogue’s digital cover in a Dolce & Gabbana wedding gown last year.
Currently the Bezoses are the flavour of the month and of the Met Gala. Will drones replace glam-bots on the red carpet?
Will rumoured guest Madonna changes the lyrics of her song Vogue to “Sanchez Bezos, Harlow, Jean/picture of a beauty queen”?
Or do we accept that the dress code for this year’s event, “Fashion is Art”, is as outdated as a peasant blouse? Don’t worry about looking at the clothes. The price tag is all that counts.
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