Evangelists for all times in outer space, Lauren Sánchez and Jeff Bezos are already living on a distinct celestial body.
Welcome to Planet Ridiculous, population: 2.
The December issue of Vogue, featuring the 53-year-old Sánchez, takes us mere mortals on a tour of their otherworldly perch — full of climate hypocrisy and margaritas.
The latter helps the previous go down easy.
There are helicopter rides, various luxury properties, and a giant pink diamond engagement ring (“When Jeff opened the box, I feel I blacked out a bit”).
At one point, Sánchez corrects the idea that the voluptuous figurehead on the front of Bezos’ $500 million superyacht — the most important of its kind on the planet — is her likeness.
“If it was me…” Sánchez says, sculpting the air to suggest larger boobs.
Once, Sánchez explains, she and Kim Kardashian got right into a bidding war over a Balenciaga couture dress.
Kardashian, a pal, suggested they buy it together and pass it backwards and forwards, like some billionaire version of Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants.
As a substitute — what luck! — the designer offered to make two; they each ponied up $200,00 and can travel to Paris together for a fitting.
Equally relatable: Sánchez recalls being present at the primary Blue Origin crewed flight to suborbital space in 2021.
“They were cracking jokes within 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 approaching 12 months.
“Jeff all the time says, ‘Constructing the road to space in order that our youngsters can construct the long run.’ And that’s what it’s about. Launch, land, repeat, time and again in order that we are able to work out the best way to have reusable rockets …
“I say magical lots, don’t I?” she asks with an enormous smile.
In a single Vogue vignette, Bezos — who surely had other things to do this day? — plays a bartender within 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 author (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 important ingredient.
“I don’t think we have now salt. I used to be going to offer you a salted rim. It’s an important a part of the margarita,” says the world’s third-richest man.
Inside eight minutes, a container of salt appears, prompting Bezos to “marvel”: “Wow, there’s like a salt genie on the market!”
That’s one approach to confer with the hired help.
Sánchez talks up her and Bezos’ philanthropy, including supporting tuition-free preschool and taking trips to Tijuana to cut zucchini in a relief kitchen.
She boasts in regards to the Bezos Earth Fund, which has tossed $10 billion into environmental causes.
“I feel Jeff and I actually are specializing in 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’s magical,” Sánchez notes — a line that implies it’s the exception relatively than the rule.
However 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 maneuver to Miami.
There are also campus visits to see Bezos’ 4 college-aged children (a minimum of one in every of them is reportedly at Princeton, some 2,750 miles from LA).
I’d bet my Delta Miles that they’ve more time in flight in a single 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, keep in mind that time I went camping and commissioned custom-made chaps for everybody on the trip.
For Sánchez’s upcoming wedding, she tells Vogues she is dresses from Christian Dior, Dolce & Gabbana, and Valentino.
Though her sister, Elena Sánchez Blair, insists that’s not likely who the long run Mrs. Bezos is: “… the reality is more often than not we’re on the couch in sweats and yoga pants, playing Sloppy Dice or Heads Up on our phones.”
Sánchez, who began dating Bezos in 2019, chooses to clarify who she is thru a more cinematic lens.
“In fact, Jeff’s favorite movie [of the summer] was ‘Oppenheimer,’ and I like ‘Barbie,’” she tells Vogue. “And there you will have us summed up in two movies.”
Indeed, Sánchez is the Barbie Mattel never made.
The whole lot about her, from her breasts to her giant lips to her sculpted biceps that say “I can afford to spend 4 hours a day figuring out,” is completely exaggerated, like a cartoon.
But, I’ve gotta say, there’s something alluring and intriguing about Sánchez: her high-octane joie de vivre.
She has a humorousness — and about herself, which is a rarity in Bezos’ stratosphere.
I don’t consider I’ve ever heard her complain.
Perhaps billions of dollars will blunt grievances, but nowadays, deep pockets and privilege don’t all the time inoculate people from victimhood — hello, Meghan Markle.
Sánchez seems to know the way fortunate she and Bezos are.
You get the impression that they’re having a rattling good time living it up.
Also, give credit where it’s due.
In accordance with Vogue, Sánchez would sleep within the backseat of her Arizona grandmother’s Ford while the lady drove to scrub houses at 5 a.m., then prepare for college on the restaurant her grandmother managed as her second job.
Sánchez went on to beat dyslexia, graduate from USC, turn into a TV host in LA, learn to fly, and begin her own successful aerial filming business.
She’s optimistic. And formidable.
“One thing I learned about Lauren is that if I’m in a bind, I can throw the gun to her,” says Bezos.
“I feel I can get him out of most situations,” she agrees. “I’d fly him out!”
Perhaps she’d fly him to the closest Gucci for leather pants and a flamboyant hat.
But that appears to be their MO: She makes the world’s third richest man infinitely more ridiculous — but in addition more interesting.
And she or he does it with no apologies.
