Evangelists for life in outer space, Lauren Sánchez and Jeff Bezos are already living on a different celestial body.
Welcome to Planet Ridiculous, population: 2.
The December issue of Vogue, featuring 53-year-old Sánchez as the cover star, takes us mere mortals on a tour of their otherworldly perch — filled with climate hypocrisy and margaritas. The latter helps the former go down easy.
There are helicopter rides, various luxury properties and a giant pink diamond engagement ring (“When Jeff opened the box, I think I blacked out a bit”).
At one point, Sánchez corrects the belief that the voluptuous figurehead at the front of Bezos’ $500 million superyacht — the largest of its kind in the world — is her likeness.
“If it was me…” Sánchez says, sculpting the air to suggest bigger boobs.
Once, Sánchez explains, she and Kim Kardashian got into a bidding war over a Balenciaga couture dress. Kardashian, a pal, suggested they buy it together and pass it back and forth, like some billionaire version of Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. Instead — what luck! — the designer offered to make two; they each ponied up $200,00 and will travel to Paris together for a fitting.
Equally relatable: Sánchez recalls being present at the first Blue Origin crewed flight to suborbital space in 2021. “They were cracking jokes in the capsule,” she says of Bezos & Co. with “mock incredulity” (Vogue’s words). “While I’m literally crying, holding his mother.”
Nonetheless, Sánchez plans to go on a Blue Origin voyage in the coming year.
“Jeff always says, ‘Building the road to space so that our children can build the future.’ And that’s what it’s about. Launch, land, repeat, over and over so that we can figure out how to have reusable rockets …
“I say magical a lot, don’t I?” she asks with a big smile.
In one Vogue vignette, Bezos — who surely had other things to do that day? — plays bartender in the “Astronaut Village” section of the 400,000-acre West Texas ranch that he purchased in 2004.
Whipping up margaritas for his fiancée and the writer (Candice Bergen’s daughter, no mere mortal herself), the 59-year-old billionaire meticulously measures Milagro tequila and triple sec.
Bezos — wearing tiger’s-eye and silver-chain bracelets like a Vegas magician circa 2005 — cuts perfect crescent-shaped lime wedges before realizing he’s missing an essential ingredient.
“I don’t think we have salt. I was going to give you a salted rim. It’s a very important part of the margarita,” says the world’s third-richest man.
Within eight minutes, a container of salt appears, prompting Bezos to “marvel”: “Wow, there’s like a salt genie out there!”
That’s one way to refer to the hired help.
Sánchez talks up her and Bezos’ philanthropy, including supporting tuition-free preschool and taking trips to Tijuana to chop zucchini in a relief kitchen. She boasts about the Bezos Earth Fund, which has tossed $10 billion to environmental causes.
“I think Jeff and I really are focusing on the long-term commitment to climate, and we’re extremely optimistic about it,” she says, noting his 417-foot yacht, Koru, can sail using wind power.
“We’ve done it and it is magical,” Sánchez notes — a line that suggests it’s the exception rather than the rule.
But the story also describes a dizzying schedule that finds the couple flying up and down the West Coast weekly from Los Angeles, where her kids live part-time with their father, Hollywood agent Patrick Whitesell, to Bezos’ home base of Seattle; soon, the trips will get longer as they plan to move to Miami. There are also campus visits to see Bezos’ four college-aged children (at least one of them is reportedly at Princeton, some 2,750 miles from LA).
I’d bet my Delta Miles that they have more time in flight in one week than most of us do in five years. But, apparently, throwing $10 billion at it achieves the all-mighty carbon neutrality.
Yet Sánchez protests, “Our lives are pretty normal.”
I, too, remember that time I went camping and commissioned custom-made chaps for everyone on the trip.
For Sánchez’s upcoming wedding, she tells Vogues she is looking at dresses from Christian Dior, Dolce & Gabbana and Valentino. Though her sister, Elena Sánchez Blair, insists that’s not really who the future Mrs. Bezos is: “… the truth is most of the time we are on the couch in sweats and yoga pants, playing Sloppy Dice or Heads Up on our phones.”
Sánchez, who started dating Bezos in 2019, chooses to explain who she is through a more cinematic lens.
“Of course, Jeff’s favorite movie [of the summer] was ‘Oppenheimer,’ and I love ‘Barbie,’” she tells Vogue. “And there you have us summed up in two movies.”
Indeed, Sánchez is the Barbie Mattel never made.
Everything about her, from her breasts to her giant lips to her sculpted biceps that say “I can afford to spend four hours a day working out,” is totally exaggerated, like a cartoon.
But, I’ve gotta say, there is something alluring and intriguing about Sánchez: her high-octane joie de vivre.
She has a sense of humor — and about herself, which is a rarity in Bezos’ stratosphere.
I don’t believe I’ve ever heard her complain.
Maybe billions of dollars will blunt grievances, but these days, deep pockets and privilege don’t always inoculate people from victimhood — hello, Meghan Markle. Sánchez seems to know how fortunate she and Bezos are. You get the impression that they’re having a damn good time living it up.
Also, give credit where it’s due. According to Vogue, Sánchez would sleep in the backseat of her Arizona grandmother’s Ford while the woman drove to clean houses at 5 a.m., then get ready for school at the restaurant her grandmother managed as her second job.
Sánchez went on to overcome dyslexia, graduate from USC, become a TV host in LA, learn to fly and start her own successful aerial filming business.
She’s optimistic. And formidable.
“One thing I learned about Lauren is if I’m in a bind, I can throw the gun to her,” says Bezos.
“I think I can get him out of most situations,” she agrees. “I’d fly him out!”
Perhaps she’d fly him to the nearest Gucci for leather pants and a flamboyant hat. But that seems to be their MO: She makes the world’s third richest man infinitely more ridiculous — but also more interesting.
And she does it with no apologies.
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