- Lifestyle
In their latest power play, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and his new wife Lauren Sánchez are funding the Met Gala, the biggest event in the fashion calendar. Katie Rosseinsky explores how the couple set their sights on the A-list, and their possible future plans
Sunday 23 November 2025 06:00 GMTComments
open image in galleryPower couple Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez are making a play for dominance of the fashion world (Getty)
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On the first Monday in May, the biggest names in fashion, film and music will ascend the stairs of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art for the iconic venue’s annual gala. And presiding over them all, alongside Vogue stalwart Anna Wintour, will be a couple whose presence on the rarefied guest list might have raised eyebrows just a few years ago: Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez Bezos.
Earlier this week, US Vogue confirmed that the multi-billionaire Amazon founder, currently the third richest man in the world, along with his TV host-turned-philanthropist wife, will serve as the lead sponsors for the 2026 Met Gala. They’ll also fund the accompanying exhibition at the Met’s Costume Institute (publishing house Condé Nast and fashion brand Saint Lauren are providing financial support, too).
This venture for the newlyweds, who tied the knot back in June in a staggeringly lavish – or eye-wateringly ostentatious – Venetian extravaganza, won’t come cheap. Last year’s Gala cost around $6 million, although that sum is small change when your estimated net worth sits somewhere around the $250 billion mark. “Bezos buys his wife the party of the year,” read one disparaging headline from the Daily Beast. Social media users, meanwhile, inevitably joked about attendees ordering their outfits via Amazon’s next-day Prime delivery.
But this latest move shows how seriously the pair have jointly set their sights on the fashion industry, and the celebrity circuit at large. Wintour famously gets the final say on the gala’s invitees, but as sponsors of the event often referred to as “the Oscars of fashion”, the pair will inevitably have some influence over who gets the call-up (does that mean everyone onboard the Blue Origin rocket during Sánchez’s recent foray into space travel is guaranteed a spot?). And Sánchez will surely have her pick of designers queuing up to dress her for the night.
Their Met Gala takeover is just the latest sign that the couple, whose joint ethos could probably be loosely summed up as “more is more, and then some”, are not content with simply being jaw-droppingly wealthy. Instead, they are seeking the cultural cachet that comes with infiltrating fashion’s upper echelons, and the reflected glory that comes with hanging out with the A-list.
While their fellow Silicon Valley couples are content to wield power behind the scenes, the Bezos-Sachézes, it seems, are vying for the spotlight. It’s as if they’re trying to emulate David and Victoria Beckham, a stylish power duo with lucrative business interests across a whole range of fields, rather than, say, Mark and Priscilla Zuckerberg.
It’s all a far cry from the 61-year-old Bezos’s early days as an e-commerce pioneer. The one-time hedge fund manager launched Amazon in a rented garage in Washington in 1994 and, for more than two decades, he and his first wife MacKenzie Scott opted for a low-key lifestyle described by a family friend as “abnormally normal”. His reputation was that of a publicity-shy tech geek, someone who wasn’t exactly flash: in 2013, Bezos was reportedly still driving a 1997 Honda, because it was “a perfectly good car”.
open image in galleryBezos was once described as having an 'abnormally normal' lifestyle (AFP via Getty)There were signs, however, that he might aspire to a more glamorous milieu. In 2012, he attended the Met Gala for the first time with Scott, when Amazon sponsored the event. A few years later, in an early sign of his designs on Hollywood, he hosted his own starry party for Manchester by the Sea, which would become Amazon’s first Academy Award-nominated movie.
That night would put him on a path heading far away from “abnormally normal”. On the guest list was Patrick Whitesell, CEO of the Hollywood talent agency Endeavour, who reportedly introduced Bezos to his wife… Lauren Sánchez. Back then, she was best known as a TV host on Fox, but she’d recently become a keen helicopter pilot; she was also about to launch Black Ops Aviation, a production company specialising in aerial filming.
In 2018, Bezos hired Black Ops to shoot footage for the space tech company Blue Origin, his passion project. Soon, the limelight-averse founder and the showbiz interviewer found themselves becoming the story. At the start of 2019, Bezos and Scott confirmed that they were divorcing after 25 years of marriage; in the happy-clappy parlance of celebrity break-up statements, they promised to “continue our shared life as friends”.
But the following day, the National Enquirer ran a story alleging that Bezos and Sánchez were embroiled in an affair (sources close to the couple, meanwhile, argued that their respective marriages had been over long before their relationship began). The tabloid also published texts between them: “I love you, alive girl” was somehow one of the less mortifying messages from him to her.
Bezos, meanwhile, hit back by accusing the Enquirer’s publisher, American Media Inc, of “extortion and blackmail” for threatening to publish intimate photos of the pair (in a statement at the time, AMI said it “believe[d] fervently that it acted lawfully in the reporting of the story of Mr Bezos”).
Bezos’s personal life was now tabloid fodder; no longer was he simply someone you might read about in the business pages, or in a tech magazine profile. Thanks to speedy divorce proceedings, he and Scott’s marriage officially ended in April; Sánchez also finalised her split from Whitesell, and the new couple started to embark on a series of paparazzi-friendly vacations around the world.
In 2021, Bezos stepped down as Amazon’s chief executive, giving him more time to fully embrace the super-rich lifestyle. He’d soon hire celebrity personal trainer Wes Okerson to overhaul his image from weedy tech guy to beefed-up Broligarch, and reportedly dropped around $500 million on his custom superyacht, Koru (a boat so massive it comes with its own support yacht). He and Sánchez were joined on board by a load of celebrity pals, such as Leonardo DiCaprio, Usher, Katy Perry and her then-fiancé Orlando Bloom; Sánchez, it seemed, was introducing him to a whole new social circle.
open image in gallerySánchez’s inauguration outfit made headlines back in January (Getty)The yacht was also the backdrop for the couple’s 2023 engagement, after Bezos hid a (massive) diamond ring under Sánchez’s pillow while they were travelling on Koru. “When he opened the box, I think I blacked out a bit,” Sánchez revealed in a US Vogue interview published a few months later. This profile, accompanied by a lavish Annie Leibovitz photoshoot, was one of the first signs that the couple were winning over fashion world tastemaker Wintour, who has always had a keen eye for strategic alliances (sorry, friendships).
In the piece, Sánchez positioned herself and Bezos as a sort of super-rich two-for-one, working in tandem. “We always look at each other and go, ‘We’re the team,’” she told the magazine. “So everything’s shared.” They also talked up their philanthropic efforts, such as the Bezos Earth Fund, a $10 billion commitment to tackling climate change (the question of whether the couple’s superyacht and its significant carbon footprint might sit uneasily alongside those efforts remained unasked).
A few months later, Bezos and Sánchez attended the 2024 Met Gala; according to reports, Wintour helped select the latter’s Oscar de la Renta gown, due to concerns that Sánchez might opt for something akin to the sparkling, plunging and semi-sheer number she’d worn to a White House dinner.
Indeed, Sánchez’s route to fashion acceptance feels a little like the one taken by her friend Kim Kardashian about a decade earlier: the nod of approval from Wintour, the Vogue interview, the subtle image overhaul, the front-row appearances. The transformation, though, has probably been less dramatic in Sánchez’s case: she still loves a plunging neckline, as demonstrated by her headline-grabbing bra top worn at Donald Trump’s presidential inauguration in January.
open image in gallerySánchez and Bezos during their wedding festivities in Venice (AFP/Getty)The couple’s presence at the inauguration, sitting near Zuckerberg, Elon Musk and Google CEO Sundar Pichai, also seemed like the start of a new political pivot, for Bezos especially, who once voiced a fear that Trump would be a “threat to democracy”. Trump, for his part, hasn’t always been overly enamoured of Bezos either; he once referred to him, inevitably, as “Jeff Bozo”. But in 2024, The Washington Post, the paper Bezos bought in 2013, refused to back Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign, reportedly at the owner’s request. Whether his new alignment with Maga is an actual political shift or pure business-minded pragmatism remains to be seen; perhaps Sánchez’s friendship with Trump’s daughter Ivanka helped smooth things over too.
Ivanka was one of the high-profile guests at the Bezos-Sánchez wedding in June, alongside the likes of DiCaprio, Oprah Winfrey, actor Sydney Sweeney and a handful of Kardashians. It was an event that played out with all the fanfare and media scrutiny of a royal wedding, although the couple’s decision to get married in Venice stoked the ire of environmental activists and locals fighting over-tourism; they later claimed a victory after Bezos reportedly had to change venues at the last minute due to planned protests.
Another gushing Vogue profile documented the occasion, revealing Sánchez’s lacy Dolce & Gabbana gown to the world. Soon after, reports began to swirl that Bezos was considering buying Condé Nast, the publishing house behind Vogue and GQ, as a wedding gift for his new bride. But sources close to Bezos shut down the rumours, and the house’s longtime owners, the Newhouse family, said their titles weren’t for sale. Purchasing a print media company in the year 2025 would have arguably been a strange decision for a forward-thinker like Bezos, anyway; he already has the Post in his portfolio to tick off the “legacy media” box.
open image in galleryThe couple at Paris Fashion Week in October (Getty)Whether or not she’s secretly harbouring ambitions to be the next Wintour, Sánchez’s charm offensive on the fashion industry has continued. In October, she was a front-row fixture at Paris Fashion Week, attending shows for the likes of Dior and Chanel in archival vintage looks that reflected her growing industry clout. To curate this Paris wardrobe, she worked with in-demand stylist Molly Dickson, whose clients have included Lana del Rey, Stranger Things actor Sadie Sink and Sánchez’s pal Sweeney (could she have put them in touch?)
Indeed, Sánchez’s strong ties with Tinseltown could also prove useful for another Amazon venture: the brand’s streaming service. Amazon gained creative control of the James Bond franchise earlier this year, and Bezos is reportedly keen for Sweeney to appear as a leading lady in a future 007 instalment. It’s not hard to imagine the couple wooing acting talent by giving them the hard sell over dinner at their Miami mega-home.
What else is on the cards for the pair? Like so many other Silicon Valley types, Bezos is clearly fascinated by the quest to make getting old and frail a thing of the past (if you can afford it). He’s thought to be a major investor in Altos Labs, a biotech startup that aims to reverse the ageing process by rejuvenating cells.
And, of course, there’s Blue Origin. The fact that Sánchez and pals’ girlboss-y jaunt to the Karman Line, the boundary of space, was roundly mocked earlier this year is unlikely to have made any difference to their future plans (however funny the memes may have been). Like them, loathe them, or just find them a bit, well, cringe, this is a power couple whose influence is only going to grow – til it reaches truly stratospheric levels.
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