Jeff Bezos's big fat Venetian wedding proves one thing

Money can't buy you class, but it can buy you a bunch of famous guests.

On Thursday, Anna Wintour shocked the fashion world by announcing she would be stepping down from her role as editor-in-chief of Vogue after 37 years.

A day later, Vogue published a digital cover story about Lauren Sánchez-Bezos just as her much-hyped wedding to billionaire Jeff Bezos was winding down in Venice. In the cover image, the former TV journalist-turned-space-tourist stood in a cypress grove wearing a mermaid-cut high-collared lace bridal gown by Italian designers (and convicted tax cheats) Dolce & Gabbana.

The accompanying profile, which followed Sánchez at a gown fitting, referred vaguely to the “edge of judgment” in some media coverage of the Bezos-Sánchez union. But it did not mention any of the reasons for said “judgment,” including Bezos’ cynical embrace of President Donald Trump, his dismantling of The Washington Post, Amazon’s dismal record on everything from labor to the environment, or the fact that the corporation pays a lower rate in taxes than most Americans. It did, however, include the vital detail that Sánchez had “lost three and a half pounds in the lead-up to her wedding.”

The story helped to intensify a backlash already raging over the lavish wedding—which cost a reported $50 million and arrived as the Senate prepared to vote on a spending bill that will make wealthy Americans like Bezos even richer while decimating programs like Medicaid and food stamps. On Vogue’s Instagram account, the cover was met with a deluge of negative comments, most of them saying something to the effect of “This must be why Anna stepped down” or “I didn’t know you could buy your way onto the cover of Vogue.”

Who knows if the Sánchez puff piece is, in fact, the straw that finally broke Wintour’s back after nearly four decades. The legendary editor is known for both supporting Democrats and disdaining fame-thirsty arrivistes like Sánchez, so it seems likely she had to hold her nose through the whole ordeal.

But it is arguably not the most shameful article to run in Vogue during Wintour’s reign. (That dubious honor goes to the fawning 2011 profile of Asma Al-Assad, wife of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, which was facilitated by a London PR firm, came out just as civil war broke out in the country, and was later purged from the internet without explanation.) Vogue has always been aspirational, rather than accessible. Unattainable luxury is Wintour’s whole brand.

Even still, the timing of the piece couldn’t have been worse, or its tone more let-them-eat-cake-y. The phrase “read the room, you morons” comes to mind. No one is in the mood to celebrate billionaires at the moment, unless they’re giving away vast quantities of money (as Bezos’s ex-wife MacKenzie Scott has.) Just last week, Zohran Mamdani pulled off a stunning upset over disgraced former governor Andrew Cuomo in New York’s mayoral primary by promising to make the city more affordable for regular people.

Trump has spent most of the past six months enriching himself while the wealthiest man on the planet took a chainsaw to the federal government. Tuesday marked the official end of the U.S. Agency for International Development, which will lead to an estimated 14 million deaths in the coming years. The last time Sánchez was in the news—for a widely mocked 12-minute flight to space—she nearly got Katy Perry permanently canceled by association. People are angry at billionaires, and with good reason.

The Vogue piece capped a week of non-stop coverage of the Bezos festivities (and the ensuing protests, which were frankly more inspired). Especially compared with the glamorous Clooney nuptials a decade ago, the wedding was decidedly tacky, as vulgar as spring break in Daytona Beach.

There were invitations that looked like they were made on Canva. There was the pre-wedding foam party aboard the couple’s $500 million yacht, and the post-wedding pajama party attended by a bunch of Kardashians in skimpy lingerie. There were the Amazon slippers handed out as gifts. There was the undeniable fact that Sánchez has come down with an acute case of Mar-a-Lago face.

More than anything, it felt like an incredibly expensive bid for attention from two people who have literally everything they could ever want.

To quote Countess Luann, money can’t buy you class. But apparently it can buy you a bunch of celebrity guests.

To state the obvious, Venice isn’t a destination you choose if you’re interested in throwing a discreet, intimate affair far away from the paparazzi glare. (That’s what $78 million compounds in Hawaii are for.) It’s a city famous for its film festival, where celebrities and normies alike travel in open-air water taxis that make it nearly impossible to avoid being photographed. (Just ask Kanye West!)

As has been exhaustively noted in the press, the wedding was attended by a random assortment of famous people, some of whom had no obvious personal connection to the bride or groom, such as Euphoria actress Sydney Sweeney, and 1990s songstress Jewel.

Some 70 of the 200 guests at the wedding were family members, which leaves 130 people who weren’t. These invitees included extremely wealthy people from across the political spectrum, from MAGA princess Ivanka Trump to Kamala Harris supporter Oprah Winfrey, who attended with her friend Gayle King and didn’t seem even slightly embarrassed about being there.

The same could not be said of Leonardo DiCaprio, who tried to go incognito by pulling an all-black Dodgers hat down low over most of his face. The gesture did virtually nothing to render him unrecognizable (we all know what his lower jaw looks like by now). It did, however, create the unmistakable impression that the famed climate activist was not exactly thrilled to be photographed. Perhaps he knew it was a bad look to be partying with a right-leaning billionaire in a city that is literally sinking because of rising sea levels and was swarmed by more than 90 emission-spewing private planes last week?

The guest list reinforced the impression that, even in a deeply polarized environment, class allegiance comes before politics and that, for the ultrawealthy, schmoozing is more important than taking a stance.

But as Oscar-winner Charlize Theron noted on Sunday, not every celebrity was invited to the shindig—nor did they want to be.

“I think we might be the only people who did not get an invite to the Bezos wedding, but that’s okay because they suck and we’re cool,” she joked at an event for her Africa Outreach Project, where she also denounced attacks on immigrants, the rolling back of women’s rights, and foreign aid cuts that have devastated HIV and AIDS programs in South Africa, her home country.

“The world feels like it’s burning because it is,” she said.

Hopefully, Leo could hear what Theron was saying, even with his cap pulled down.

Meredith Blake is The Contrarian’s culture columnist.

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