A question for Lauren Sánchez: was this a hen do or a humanitarian mission to liberate Paris from good taste?
To Cannes, in the country of France, where last night Jeff Bezos's fiancee, Lauren Sánchez, got what she deserves: a philanthropy award. Lauren was honoured at something called the Global Gift Gala, where she received the women empowerment award for her commitment to climate justice, social justice and coming off at absolutely all times as a woman who refers to her breasts as 'my girls'. Regular readers will know I have a huge amount of time for her. She accepted her gong wearing a necklace with a diamond pendant slightly larger than an Amazon warehouse, once again redrawing the blueprint that other humanitarians will simply need to watch and learn from.
Meanwhile, if there were awards for hen nights – or bachelorette parties, in the American style – then Lauren would surely have taken one for her full-scale invasion of Paris last weekend, after French forces withdrew and declared the city open. Hand on heart, I initially assumed Lauren was the new US ambassador to France, but then remembered that state department randos were probably seated in some windy overspill gazebo for Donald Trump's presidential inauguration, while Lauren had pride of place ahead of the actual cabinet as part of Oligarchs' Row. Plus, having just Googled, I discover the Senate yesterday confirmed Trump's pick for the ambassador to France – his own son-in-law's former jailbird dad.
So this was very much a private visit to Paris for premarital pleasure on Lauren's behalf, a mood later reflected in her official Instagram communique to attendees and her 930,000 followers. 'To my girls … thank you for surprising me, lifting me up, and reminding me how much I needed this moment.' Remember, Lauren dresses everything in this same flattened palette of solipsism: a spa day, a space trip, a humanitarian award, new swimwear.
Anyway, attendees for the hen weekend included fellow astronaut Katy Perry, the two most prestigious Kardashians – Kim and materfamilias Kris Jenner – as well as Eva Longoria, who travelled onward to Cannes to present Lauren with last night's humanitarian award. If you're wondering which of the party goes back furthest with Lauren, I wouldn't waste your time. Typically, celebrities do not have old friends. They regard it as a moral failing and a sign that you don't really want the big time enough.
As for what was worn during the Paris festivities, the dress code wasn't specifically themed as Marie Antoinette – necklines did plunge deep, in the late 18th-century style, but hemlines had been guillotined somewhere near the Kármán line. One pharmaceutical billionaire's wife sported a vintage bronze-effect Issey Miyake breastplate recently purchased at auction for $54,000 (the girl brunch equivalent of that time Nicolas Cage outbid everyone for a stolen T-rex skull).
Activities over the weekend included posting diligently to Instagram, the platform owned by fellow Oligarchs' Row occupant Mark Zuckerberg, all while making sure to tag in their travelling makeup artists, hairstylists and lesser support-retinue members. There was also an ostentatiously open-top boat ride down the Seine, where I think the ladies went to view the floating corpse of a trend once known as 'quiet luxury'.
In truth, it must be said, those curated and filtered Insta photos of the attendees looked startlingly different to the candid ones snapped by Parisian street photographers as they left the various venues. Had you shown some of the faces in the latter snaps to the average person 40 years ago, they would have assumed something awful must have happened to the women. Luckily, our eyes have grown accustomed after decades of Botox, fillers and extreme 'work' going mainstream, so we don't notice the weirdness and read it instead as maximum hotness. Thank you, progress!
All in all, the entire special Parisian operation has served to heighten interest in the forthcoming Bezos and Sánchez nuptials, which are due to take place in Venice at the end of next month, after extensive lobbying by local Italian politicians for it to be chosen as the host city/organism. Venice's mayor informed the Times that 'we were in competition with other places but we won out'. As one Venetian official put it: 'It's going to be on par with a G7.' Truly, the fairytale. And if you happen to be visiting Venice as a tourist over the same dates, you should probably know that Lauren and Jeff already 'booked every water taxi in the city'.
In terms of securing other things, Lauren has become quite the expert in acquiring trophies – and I'm not talking about Jeff. This women empowerment award is far from Lauren's only humanitarian award in the past year or so. She and Jeff also picked up Conservation International's global visionary award, while madam alone somehow beat out the competition to win a humanity award from a charity called This Is About Humanity. Look, I don't pretend to understand the precise economics of throwing hugely glitzy charity galas to give climate awards to individuals who right at this moment are staying in Cannes aboard their megayacht, a vessel that emits more than 7,000 tonnes of CO2 a year and is so large it requires its own support yacht to trail around after it, carrying simple amenities such as the helicopter pad and some kind of personal submarine. I don't think normies CAN understand these things. Our role is to simply admire them.
Even so, perhaps I'm not alone in feeling that it is becoming harder and harder work. In fact, the choice of Italy as host for the Bezos-Sánchez nuptials feels almost too on the nose. A few centuries ago, the super-rich of that country kicked off the Renaissance, commissioning a vast array of jewels of the visual arts. Our modern-day power players simply give us Instagram or red-carpet pictures. More of a dark ages dynamic, really, from which we might all fervently wish to be delivered.
Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist
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