Once settled in the co*ckpit, she and a copilot, Zeus—“Yes! That’s his real name!” said Sánchez—gave me an aerial tour of the property, reported to be over 400,000 acres, a ranch near the New Mexico–Mexico border that Bezos purchased in 2004, as it reminded him of boyhood summers spent on his grandfather’s land in Cotulla, Texas. We hovered 500 feet over the mesquite- and prickly-pear-dotted desert, and through her headset Sánchez eagerly recounted the shoot the day before. “Epic is an understatement!” she said. The group moved from location to location by helicopter—Sánchez flew for most of the day—with clothing ferried ahead by pickup. She showed me the salt flats where winds had whipped up to 70 mph and blew away her changing tent. (Sánchez, unfazed, had shrugged and said, “Boys, turn around!”)
Indeed, Sánchez is not shy about her physique. The prow of Koru—Maori for “new beginnings”—is adorned with a voluptuous figurehead, one that has been gleefully suggested in the press to be carved in Sánchez’s image. “I’m very flattered, but it’s not,” said Sánchez. In fact, the figurehead is one of Bezos’s favorite mythological figures, Freyja, Norse goddess of love, fertility, war, and gold. “If it was me…” Sánchez joked, and made a gesture of having larger breasts.
Much has been made of Bezos’s evolution from round-shouldered online bookseller to Tony Stark titan of industry and the third richest man in the world. Once insular and press-shy, he formed a tight cocoon around Amazon, his then wife, MacKenzie, and their four children in Seattle. Now it’s as if he’s emerged from his chrysalis, a swole monarch, no longer Amazon CEO (a role he ceded in 2021) but an empty nester who is venturing not only into the Adriatic but into outer space. Sánchez, by all accounts, is the perfect partner for all of it—unbridled in her enthusiasm (seven people I spoke to described her as a “force”) but also socially adept, attentive, a diplomat of a kind. “Lauren has amazing intuition, almost witchy powers in that regard,” says Bezos. “She sees things that other people don’t see. She’s really very sensitive to other people and what they’re thinking.”
“She’s a sparkler in Jeff’s life,” says Barry Diller, who with his wife, Diane von Furstenberg, are two of Bezos’s closest friends and will host a second engagement party for the couple at their home in Beverly Hills. “They’re very in love with each other—they’re demonstrably in love,” he adds. “She’s lit him up in the nicest ways. She’s a great stimulant.”
“Since she’s been with Jeff, she is more peaceful and more calm. She appears more herself,” says her sister, Elena Sánchez Blair, sounding a note I heard often: that Sánchez is delighted by her new life but resolutely the person she’s always been—trained on her family and those she loves. “You see her, this beautiful force all done up in ball gowns, but the truth is most of the time we are on the couch in sweats and yoga pants, playing Sloppy Dice or Heads Up on our phones,” Sánchez Blair tells me.
Bezos seems the one who has changed—and that’s by his own account. “She has really helped me put more energy into my relationships,” he says. “She’s always encouraging me: ‘Call your kids. Call your dad. Call your mom.’ And she’s also just a very good role model. She keeps in touch with people. I’ve never seen her put makeup on without calling somebody. Usually her sister.”
Sánchez clearly adores the more extroverted Bezos. “He’s the life of the party,” she says happily. “He’s just extremely enthusiastic, and extremely funny. He can be really goofy. I mean, you’ve heard him laugh, right?”
Sánchez notes that the Kármán Line Bar, this low-slung ranch building turned space-themed bar named for the boundary between Earth and space, was all Bezos’s idea. The walls are decorated with space memorabilia, some from Bezos’s personal collection, such as a poster of cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space, and a letter from Buzz Aldrin. There are front pages of newspapers marking historic moments in space travel.
On our aerial tour she showed me the Bezos family compound—a series of sharp-cornered ranch buildings in Corten steel clustered around a two-story residence with wide floor-to-ceiling windows, built next to a swimming pool made to appear like a pond with rocky banks. This is where everyone gathers for Thanksgiving—30-plus family and friends. There’s Bezos’s kids and relatives, and last year Sánchez invited her ex, former NFL tight end Tony Gonzalez, father to her eldest, Nikko, 22 (she also has two children, Evan, 17, and Ella, 15, from her marriage to Endeavor executive chairman Patrick Whitesell), and Gonzalez’s wife, October (Tobie), and their kids. All are close; Sánchez describes Gonzalez and Tobie as two of her best friends. “We know how to modern family,” says Sánchez Blair, her sister, who also came with her three children.
She cites Salma Hayek and Amal Clooney as style inspirations. “Why? Because they dress for who they are, and that authenticity, I think, comes through.” A shimmering Dolce & Gabbana halter column she wore to a recent Caring for Women event felt exactly right: “I really think I am coming into who I am and I know what feels good,” she says. Call her effect exuberant luxury—a reminder that not every wealthy woman need swaddle herself in The Row.
I witnessed this after Sánchez landed the helicopter on the side of the Sierra Diablo mountains and we descended into the mouth of a cliff to explore the 10,000 Year Clock. “I think we should go to the bottom, right?” she said. “We can handle it, but it’s a workout.” It took over a year to drill 500 feet into solid limestone and quartz and two years for a diamond-cutting robot to slice stairs into the stone. Inside, enormous titanium and stainless gears looked like giant versions of the inside of my wristwatch and led down to a 10,000 pound bronze-cased concrete pendulum. “Wouldn’t it be cool to have a Halloween party here?” Sánchez said.
