Lauren Sánchez’s Mega-Money Hen Do Sounded The Death Knell For Quiet Luxury

Can you hear that? It’s the sound of £4,500 worth of crystals coming together to form Lauren Sánchez’s Eiffel Tower-shaped handbag—or perhaps it’s the death rattle of quiet luxury, as the fiancée of the world’s second-richest man, Jeff Bezos, rings in a new Gilded Age for the 1%.

This weekend, Kim Kardashian, Kris Jenner, Katy Perry, and Eva Longoria joined the ranks of Sánchez’s inner sanctum to celebrate Sánchez’s Parisian hen party. Also in attendance were October Gonzalez (the wife of Sánchez’s football-player ex, Tony Gonzalez, with whom she shares a son), businesswomen Elsa Collins and Natasha Poonawalla, and Fox Sports presenter Charissa Thompson.

Given where we are as a society—where private space travel for the ultra-rich garners little more than a collective shrug—it makes a strange sort of sense that Sánchez, helicopter pilot, media personality, and betrothed to Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, would throw a hen do so astronomically lavish it all but sounded the death knell for stealth wealth and quiet luxury.

Photos from the weekend, which flew across social media with the speed of a Blue Origin test flight, show Sánchez surrounded by a bevy of glamorous women, wrapped in pristine white robes and oversized sunglasses, iPhones in tow (a wink, perhaps, at how the spectacle played out across social platforms?). The dressing gown-and-shades combo is an Instagram trope, as common on the app as the caption “Office for the week” when posting about one’s holiday. But that’s where any similarities between your average hen and this supersized soirée ended.

There was a stay at the ritzy Cheval Blanc hotel, dinner at the city’s esteemed Lafayette’s restaurant—where guests reportedly snacked on fried chicken starters—and a champagne-fuelled cruise along the Seine. All in, reports put the cost at £500,000. The wedding itself, reportedly due to take place in Venice next month, is rumoured to come in around the £5 million mark, with Elton John and Lady Gaga supposedly set to perform. The Times reported that the fleet of water taxis required to ferry glamorous guests around will cost £250,000 alone—almost ten times more than the average, albeit exorbitant, cost of a typical wedding.

Then, of course, there were the outfits: bridal whites, long a mainstay of hen parties, came in the form of an Arctic-white furry coat, a corseted co-ord by French brand Murmur, lashings of diamonds, and that Judith Leiber bag. There was also an Oscar de la Renta moment—a white crop top and matching mini skirt appliquéd with blooms.

It’s easy, and tempting, to dismiss the entire spectacle as simply the rich being rich, but as the images filled my feed—despite my not following Sánchez or any of the attendees—it became harder to console myself with the old adage: money can’t buy taste.

Sánchez, it’s worth noting, is no idle ornament in Bezos’s orbit. A pilot and entrepreneur with her own (much-derided) Vogue cover shoot, she has become a kind of First Lady of Billionaire America. That her hen party doubled as a spectacle isn’t only about vanity—it’s about visibility. The weekend, too, wasn’t just a party; it was a statement.

What that statement is, exactly, remains open to interpretation. What became increasingly clear, to me at least, as the weekend unfurled is that the rich are tired of pretending they aren’t. It felt like a middle finger to modesty, as well as a knowing wink to the haters (see again that bathrobe shoot and the mock horror as one of her hens checks her phone).

Of course, it could simply be exactly what it looks like at first glance: a party so ostentatious it can only exist in the gravity-free world of the ultra-rich—Marie Antoinette with a ring light. When it comes to this new Gilded Age, the rocket has already left the launch pad. It doesn’t much matter whether we’re inspired or appalled—we’ve all been pulled into orbit.