Veteran newswoman Katie Couric thinks so, and she may be on to something

Lauren Sánchez in Dolce and Gabbana for the cover of Vogue.

Some are saying that the bride should be left alone. But the minute Lauren Sánchez allowed herself to appear on the cover of Vogue, she was fair game. A Vogue cover is not a front of a school bus; it is a carefully curated statement. Neither is it a leaked paparazzi photo. It is a deliberate, even calculated, act of presenting oneself and an event to the world. In Ms Sánchez’s case, the aim is clear, even if implicit: To showcase glamour, success, her style, and that she has ensnared a very rich man. By doing so, she is actively participating in the public discourse about fashion, celebrity, and wealth. Appearing on Vogue is a way for her to tell her story on her terms. But telling a story—any or anyone’s story—is not a one way street. A narrative and the reactions to them are not two different planets.

The latest to join the criticism against Jeff Bezos’s bride is former Today host Katie Couric. On an Instagram post shared by Jack Schlossberg (John F. Kennedy’s grandson) featuring the Vogue cover, she wrote: “Welcome to the eighties—when big hair and conspicuous consumption ruled. Apparently tacky is back.” Some have responded and called her comment “harsh”. But Ms Couric was not alone with her word choice. Earlier, in the New York Times, fashion journalist Amy Odell called the wedding celebration a “triumph of tacky”. The comments have been widely reported and have generated further discussion about Sanchez’s wedding look and the overall display of wealth, doing little to quell the criticism, but rather amplify it.

She is actively participating in the public discourse about fashion, celebrity, and wealth

Despite tacky’s persuasive win, it is still a subjective term, yet the convergence of opinions from different influential figures and publications indicates that Ms Couric’s and Ms Odell’s assessments resonated with a segment of the public who found the wedding’s opulence to be excessive or ill-judged. The criticism, however, isn’t just an American echo. From media outlets in India to France to the UK, to online forums across continents, the consensus often converges on a similar verdict: the Bezos-Sánchez wedding, from its widely mocked invitation to its sheer scale, represented oligarchical ornate overkill that begged to be criticised. The world was watching, and it did not hold back.

But Vogue did. It held back on its usual close-cropped images, including the wedding shots of Melania Knauss (and later Mrs Trump) in 2005 and Kim Kardashian (and Kanye West) in 2014. Rather than choose a stronger cover that provided eye contact between model and reader/viewer, they picked a garden variety picture, with an awkward pose of Ms Sánchez clutching her hands as if to mask abdominal pain that even Brides magazine would resist to feature. This editorial decision, which led to the suspicion that the out-going editor-in-chief Anna Wintour had no part in it, was particularly striking, given the widespread criticism already surrounding the very Dolce & Gabbana dress featured so prominently on its cover, a dress so deliberately voluptuous that only Ursula the cecaelian sea witch in The Little Mermaid would wear to her own wedding.

In a Dolce and Gabbana tuxedo shirt

But to make her more relatable, Vogue included a strange photo of Ms Sánchez, almost without make-up, in a plain white tuxedo shirt, lit in such as way as to make her appear almost angelic. It was as if to capture the afterglow after the festivities and the man she married had fulfilled his spousal duties. She was so overwhelmed with enhanced satisfaction that she slipped into his dinner shirt from the evening before and dashed out to meet that rising sun. This was Ms Sánchez, still in bride mode. Vogue’s editorial strategy often leans into the most idealized versions of life, and a wedding is one of the peak moments for this kind of aspirational projection. It was not enough that a bride in custom Dolce and Gabbana has indeed achieved the pinnacle of joy.

In the cover story, editor of vogue.com Chloe Malle (also considered choice among at least four to take over as American Vogue’s new head of content), who wrote the story, described the shoot: “She is now posing, hands on hips and leaning forward—Fellini-esque”. It is not clear who will find it insulting, the bride or the filmaker. Over here, we have a simple, two-syllable word to describe all that action—tonggeng. That there is a need to mask something clearly not high fashion as high film art is lending credence to the growing charges of tackiness. Once a story is released, it enters the public sphere (whether a living room conversation or a global media platform) and is subject to interpretation by the audience. Ultimately, there is so much control of the narrative one can have. The money betrayed it all.

Photos: Tierney Gearon/vogue.com