Has any woman loved a corset as much as Lauren Sánchez Bezos? Mae West, perhaps, but that was back in the heyday of her Hollywood career, almost a century before Ms. Sánchez Bezos burst into the public consciousness as the new object of the Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos’ very public affection.
Now that she and Mr. Bezos have made their union official, and the foam and fervor surrounding the wedding that riveted the world has (somewhat) settled, so, too, her affiliation with that garment has been formalized.
Her troth was clearly pledged at the prenuptial bash, when Ms. Sánchez Bezos wore an off-the-shoulder Schiaparelli couture gown so tightly bound at the waist that she resembled nothing so much as a vintage perfume bottle. It reached its apogee at the wedding ceremony, with a Dolce & Gabbana gown that may have been covered with sheer lace at the top but was so molded from the bosom down that it shaped her body into the platonic ideal of an ivory siren’s curve.
And it finished off the following day at the couple’s going-away pajama party with a strapless pink Atelier Versace number that thrust Ms. Sánchez Bezos’ breasts out to there and pulled her waist into here.
In many ways, Ms. Sánchez Bezos’ penchant for a garment most associated with monarchs and courtesans has become a symbol of the complicated, impossible-to-ignore feelings that their relationship, and wedding itself, have engendered. The ones rooted in age-old stereotypes about feminism, wealth, class, women’s advancement and how it all looks. Or should look.
Rarely has one woman’s style become such a talking point. For every bosom-boosting bustier Ms. Sánchez Bezos has worn, the criticisms have rained down. “Inappropriate,” shrieked a host of online commentators after she wore a crimson off-the-shoulder corseted gown by Rosario to the state dinner for Japan in 2024.
Megyn Kelly was even less diplomatic on her podcast after Ms. Sánchez Bezos wore a white Alexander McQueen pantsuit with a lacy white corset underneath to President Trump’s swearing in ceremony in January. “She looked like a prostitute!” Ms. Kelly said. “She looked like a hooker!”
Even Katie Couric weighed in after the wedding was memorialized in Vogue: “Tacky,” she decreed.
And yet, Ms. Sánchez Bezos doesn’t seem to care.
She has refused to conform to the archetype of the demure, W.A.S.P. upper class. Bombshell Sophia Loren was her bridal inspiration, not Babe Paley.
She does not appear to collect Hermès Birkins (even if she carried a Kelly to one of her prewedding events) or lunch in Chanel beige-and-black spectator pumps. She does not swaddle herself in Loro Piana cashmere or favor the Row. It doesn’t seem as if Babe Paley, Jackie Kennedy, Annette de la Renta or Ann Getty are her role models. Stealth is not going to be the way she shows her wealth.
Her preferred look, to quote Fernando Garcia of Oscar de la Renta and Monse, who dressed Ms. Sánchez Bezos for both the Met Gala and her much derided all-female Blue Origin flight to space, is “hot.” Or “hot and rich.”
The theories about why, exactly, abound.
Maybe the allegiance to the corset is actually a feminist statement. This is one take.
Maybe it’s a refusal to play by the old rule book and an insistence that a woman can dress in body-baring clothing but be serious, too.
Joanna Coles, the chief creative and content officer of The Daily Beast, tried that one out on the site’s podcast after the inauguration. “I felt last week that I hadn’t been sufficiently appreciative of Lauren Sánchez’s breasts,” she said. She then went on to call Ms. Sánchez Bezos’ style “a bid for female freedom.”
Well, it’s possible. But Ms. Sánchez Bezos has never framed herself as a feminist thinker. (She does claim to be a climate activist, a position that has its own complications given the carbon emissions of her husband’s superyacht.) And she has been fairly upfront about her willingness to suffer for fashion.
“Breathing,” Mr. Garcia said she once joked when trying on her (very corseted) Met Gala look, “is overrated.” Given the current fight for control over women’s bodies, that’s not quite so funny any more. Casting her corset love as a feminist statement may be wishful thinking along the lines of the Free Melania crew, who read their own politics into the first lady’s dress.
More likely her signature look is a raspberry blown at the puritan pieties of the crowd. People are going to be ogling and judging no matter what, but Ms. Sánchez Bezos is beholden to no one’s taste but her own.
As she told Vogue back in 2023: “I always found it interesting that people say, ‘Well, Lauren, you definitely dress more for men.’ I actually dress for myself.”
Indeed, she may be the perfect fashion role model for these Trumpian times. Exultantly embodying the end of a certain cultural norm — or at least its veneer — spilling out of a corset.
Vanessa Friedman has been the fashion director and chief fashion critic for The Times since 2014.
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