June 30, 2025 • 19 mins
There was a time, not so long ago, when so-called quiet luxury, or stealth wealth, was in vogue. You remember; this is what Gwyneth Paltrow wore during her ski slopes trial; understated cashmere cardigans and suits cut just so that you had to be in the know, to know that these had come from The Row and Celine and cost a bomb.
But the $50 million wedding, last week, between Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez has marked a new age. That’s right, we’re now in 'The Age of Vulgarity.'
Today, senior columnist Jacqueline Maley, on why this celebrity wedding is different from all the rest. And how we’re all going to pay the price.
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Episode Transcript
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S1 (00:02):
From the newsrooms of the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.
This is the morning edition. I'm Samantha Selinger Morris. It's Tuesday,
July 1st. There was a time, not so long ago,
when so-called quiet luxury or stealth wealth was in vogue.
You remember this is what Gwyneth Paltrow wore during her
(00:24):
ski slopes trial. Understated cashmere cardigans and suits cut just
so that you had to be in the know. To
know that these had come from the Row and Celine
and cost an absolute bomb. But the $50 million wedding
last week between Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez has marked
a new age. That's right. We are now in the
(00:45):
age of vulgarity. Today, senior columnist Jacqueline Maley on why
this celebrity wedding is different from all the rest, and
how we're all going to pay the price. Now, Jack,
if ever there was a sign that unabashed displays of
wealth are now back in again, it's got to be
(01:06):
the wedding of Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos to former TV
host Lauren Sanchez in Venice over the weekend. So take
us into, I guess, what's got to be one of
the first big questions, which is why are we interested? Like,
why do we care?
S2 (01:19):
I mean, I suppose it's been very much shoved in
our faces. You know, it's sort of seems to be everywhere,
like all the major outlets are reporting it.
S3 (01:28):
Well, not a detail or expense was spared at the
wedding of Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos and his wife, Lauren Sanchez,
in Venice.
S4 (01:38):
But of the 200 guests, about 70 were family. And
then lots and lots of A-listers from Oprah Winfrey, Gayle King,
the Kardashians, Tom Brady, Orlando Bloom, Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump.
But not her father, President Trump, though he was invited.
S2 (01:55):
You know, it's a spectacle. It's interesting. There's a lot
of famous people going. Venice is a beautiful city. It's
a city of love. It's got all the elements, right?
I mean, it's probably not that deep. We probably just
like watching it because it's kind of pretty and shiny.
S1 (02:11):
Okay, true. But I guess tell us, who are Jeff
Bezos and Lauren Sanchez? And just how crazy was their wedding?
Because your column made me do a bit of a
deep dive, you know, about weddings that had cost a
lot of money and been really outrageous. You know, Prince
William and Catherine Middleton's wedding in 2011, that was $33 million,
according to some reports. But tell us about this, because
(02:31):
this really does overshoot most of those weddings, if not
all of them in many regards.
S2 (02:36):
Yeah. I mean, I don't know how people come up
with these figures, I really don't. Um, and I guess
they're just guesses anyway. But the figure that was being
reported was that it cost $50 million, which seems like
a lot for a wedding, even if you're a billionaire.
S5 (02:49):
Expected price tag of nearly 56 million. The three day
celebration is one of the most expensive weddings ever.
S6 (02:57):
And that theme, apparently it started off as a Venetian
mask theme, very formal. Then halfway through it went into
a pyjama theme, and the guests at the ceremony yesterday
actually received goodie bags with Amazon slippers inside just for
this occasion. Of course, the bride, Lauren Sanchez.
S2 (03:14):
Yes. So Jeff Bezos is obviously the founder of Amazon
and has made a significant fortune with that extremely successful
company which pretty much owns, you know, the online home
delivery market and which was very much turbocharged by the
pandemic when everybody was getting stuff sent to them at home.
(03:37):
And of course, has some television now as well and.
S1 (03:39):
Owns the Washington Post, of course.
S2 (03:41):
Yes, of course, he's a media owner as well, and
was always, I think, a sort of a card carrying Democrat,
but has become a little bit more, um, associated with
the Trump administration. The speculation is that he sort of
needs to cozy up to the Trump administration to get
lucrative federal contracts for space stuff. And Lauren Sanchez is
a former TV journalist, a sort of former TV A
(04:02):
broadcaster who was previously married to another very wealthy man
and was sort of quite reasonably well known. But I
guess you would not say an A-lister. Before she met
Jeff Bezos, they were both married to other people, and
there was sort of a scandal that was picked up
by a tabloid where their text messages to each other
and they were apparently having an extramarital affair were leaked
(04:24):
into the public domain.
S1 (04:25):
Okay, now we're going to get into the connections with
Trump and the implications of that a bit later. But
first of all, just tell us, because there was a
backlash amongst many Venetians against this wedding. Why?
S2 (04:36):
Yeah, I mean, the backlash seems to be a little
bit multi-pronged. So there's just been a bit of activism
about it. Some of it I think is just kind
of general anti billionaire sort of anti wealth inequality type stuff.
So resentful of the fact that a billionaire can take
over a city.
S4 (04:52):
Tonight. Protesters shooting smoke flares off Venice's famed Rialto Bridge.
Several hundred people marching through the city's canals yelling Bezos
out of the lagoon. And no space for Bezos.
S7 (05:04):
Protesters are out as well, unfurling banners, staging mock weddings,
reminding the world that Venice has lost over half of
its residents since the 1970s due to mass tourism.
S2 (05:17):
Also, Venice is a city that is basically being claimed
by climate change, so they have a lot of environmental
problems because they're built on a marshy bunch of lagoons
and they're sort of sinking. Although the bride and groom
did make a donation, a charitable donation to an organization
that apparently tries to help the the Venetian lagoons. Yeah,
(05:38):
but I mean, otherwise, I think it's becoming quite an
unaffordable city for ordinary Venetians. So the cost of living
is very high and rents are very high. So I
guess the kind of reasoning or the logic is that
if you have these big, flashy kind of events, then
it makes it more difficult for ordinary people to live
their lives and also to afford to live in Venice.
S1 (05:56):
And you pointed out in your column that New York
magazine wrote that Lawrence Sanchez, in some respects actually represents
the aesthetic and pinnacle of the Mar a Lago era.
So what does that mean?
S2 (06:06):
You could say that the MAGA aesthetic, which is typified
by some of the women who work within the administration,
and it's a very newsreader kind of Fox News type aesthetic.
So a lot of primary colors, a lot of power suits,
very sort of done hair. You wouldn't say that it
was chic or elegant, but it was. But it's very
put together and it's highly, highly polished. So that is
(06:27):
vaguely speaking, what people talk about as being the MAGA aesthetic.
And someone like Lauren Sanchez. You wouldn't say that. She's understated. So,
you know, designers like Celine.
S1 (06:39):
The Ro.
S2 (06:40):
Yeah, those kinds of designers are very like they're almost
sort of brandless in the sense that it's just incredibly,
incredibly beautiful tailoring with incredibly luxurious fabrics and also unaffordable
for average people. But it doesn't sort of look like
much unless you know what you're looking for.
S1 (06:56):
And it's that real classist thing, like you've got to
be in the know to even know that it's the Ro,
you know, like the average person would very sensibly just think, oh,
it's a bag from Myer. Like it's just a plain
black bag, but. No, no.
S2 (07:09):
Yeah, it's just a grey cashmere sweater, but no, it's, um. Yeah.
And that that aesthetic was sort of called stealth wealth
or quiet luxury. And it was epitomized, I think, or
made very popular by Gwyneth Paltrow when she appeared every day,
sort of beautifully dressed, but in a very sort of
understated way. At the trial, when she was called to
give evidence, when that guy was suing her for bumping
(07:30):
into him on the ski slopes at Aspen or something,
suitably sort of one percenter like that. Um, so that
aesthetic is basically over, and I think even British Vogue
or maybe it was American Vogue recently declared, like, um,
chic is chic is dead, basically. So it's it's big,
it's brash, it's bold, it's in-your-face. It's a lot more
scantily clad, you know, a lot more body parts on display.
(07:52):
And nobody's trying to hide the fact that they've had
cosmetic enhancements to their body or their face.
S1 (07:58):
No, it really dovetails with, I guess, the social media
posts of I can't remember which which starlet or influencer
was it that just posted? Yeah, yeah, I got stuff done.
Here's exactly what I got done. Was it one of
the Jenners? Was it one of the Kardashians?
S2 (08:11):
I think it was Kylie Jenner. I hate myself for
knowing that, but. And she was sort of praised for
her refreshing honesty. That's right. Because often they're like, no,
I just drink water and, you know, get eight, eight
hours of sleep every night. And that's why my skin
is so good. But she was like, no, here's a
laundry list of stuff I had done. And this is
the doctor that I went to. Yes. So it's it's
(08:31):
a really, really different, um, approach to glamour and sort
of presentation, I suppose it's like they're sort of lifting
the curtain a little bit and they are being honest
where I think, you know, the older, more discreet kind
of type of starlet or celebrity had to keep up
this pretense that, um, it was all natural or it
was all it was effortless. It was effortless. They were
(08:53):
genetically blessed. Um, but these women are actually like, no,
I restrict my diet massively, and I spend a lot
of money starving. Yeah, I spend a lot of money
on plastic surgery and and that that itself is a
sort of real pop culture shift. That's quite interesting.
S1 (09:08):
Yeah, no, it's definitely turned. And I love the name
you've given to it because as you've written, you know,
this wedding is proof that we are actually in a
new age and it's the age of vulgarity. So tell us,
I guess what it means. Like, how might it affect
the rest of us? Because you refer to a famous
quote in F Scott Fitzgerald's book, The Great Gatsby. So
give us that quote and I guess, tell us, what
(09:29):
does this telegraph for what might come? Because, you know,
he quoted, of course, famously about careless people who smash things.
S2 (09:36):
Yeah. I mean, F Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby is
obviously the sort of this incredible American classic about a
generation of extremely wealthy sort of capitalists. You know, it's
set just before the Great Depression and, you know, it's
these great American sort of nation builders and capitalists, Gatsby
being one of them, who have made enormous amounts of
(09:58):
money from sort of plundering American resources. And in Gatsby's case,
of course, we learn by the end of the novel
that some of the, you know, the source of his
wealth is actually a bit shady and dodgy, and nothing
to do with sort of legal operations to do with
booze and stuff, because of course it was the era
of prohibition. So I was just kind of interested. Yeah,
I was just sort of interested in the sort of
(10:19):
comparisons there, because Gatsby is, of course, an outsider to
that world of extreme wealth. He grew up poor and
he sort of has come into it, so he always
feels like an outsider, and he's always a sort of
observer of that world. So the quote that I really
love was F Scott Fitzgerald talks about people who's rich
people basically who smashed up things and creatures and then
retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or
(10:42):
whatever it was that kept them together and let other
people clean up the mess they had made. And, um,
the idea of carelessness is sort of interesting to me
and the carelessness of these enormously wealthy people. And, you know,
Jeff Bezos, of course, and Amazon have been accused of
some less than ideal workplace practices, and Amazon's been accused
(11:04):
of union busting and exploiting workers, basically sort of creating
a kind of whole tribe of working poor within the
American population, all these people who work in Amazon factories.
S1 (11:19):
We'll be right back. And you also sort of connect
it to the political moment. You refer to Donald Trump
recently dropping the f bomb when he was referring to,
you know, an American ally. And you said that that
was sort of perhaps a reflection that the age of
restraint is over. Like it's not even valued anymore. Is
that right? And if that is, I guess, is this
(11:40):
something that's going to really dominate our political sphere, our
social sphere? Do you think?
S2 (11:45):
I mean, I was interested in that last week because
I think there's so much that's norm busting about Donald Trump.
And but we've had him around for so long that
the norm busting he does becomes really normalized. But that,
to me was just another line that was crossed that
he would speak about an American ally or indeed about
any country in a diplomatic, you know, in this in
a sort of diplomatic setting as the American head of state,
(12:07):
that he would he would drop the f bomb.
S8 (12:10):
You know what we have? We basically have two countries
that have been fighting so long and so hard that
they don't know what the they're doing. Do you understand that?
S2 (12:20):
It was a real convention breach, I think. And I've
no doubt that presidents, including Trump and many, many other
presidents swear behind closed doors. But to do it in
that public setting and to have such a sort of
public fit of pique and almost like a sort of
tantrum that was, I thought, just very unseemly and kind
of worth pointing out that this is another line of
vulgarity that we've crossed, and this is another norm that's
(12:43):
been busted, another convention that's just been cast aside.
S1 (12:47):
And I guess, politically, do you feel that this age
of vulgarity that you say that we're now in, do
you think it's reflected, perhaps in Donald Trump's latest, you know,
so-called big beautiful bill, which really is exemplified, I guess,
by tax cuts for the rich and then a reduction
of help for disadvantaged people. You know, perhaps with cuts
to Medicaid and so forth.
S2 (13:05):
It's almost like a novelistic moment, like you couldn't really
write it because we we've talked a lot about wealth
inequality in the United States. Sort of leading to the
current moment and the fact that the Democrats in particular,
were just not able to handle that or not able
to ameliorate it. And the Democrats, for better or worse,
ended up being seen as the powerful elites who didn't
(13:27):
care about the common man in America. And that's how
we've sort of ended up with Trump. That's the kind
of that's the line. Right? That's the sort of that's
the thing that we're often told or that we often
read and hear, is Trump bringing in this sort of
mega piece of omnibus legislation, which does cut taxes for
the rich massively and does basically smash whatever social safety
(13:53):
net the United States has, which is not much compared
to countries like Australia.
S1 (13:58):
Now, I know that your column really was focusing on
this age of vulgarity that we find ourselves in. And
I'm just wondering, you know, your piece had me look back. Well,
when was the last time we were experiencing an age
of vulgarity? And I thought, well, maybe it's the 1980s,
you know, bonfire of the vanities and, you know, Wall
Street traders and just excessive wealth and greed. And I'm
just wondering, you know, if indeed that was the last time.
(14:20):
That's arguable. Like, what do we know from that precedent? Like,
how long is this age of vulgarity going to last?
Come on, give us some answers. Jack. Haley. Where's your
crystal ball?
S2 (14:28):
I know, I was just thinking about bonfire of the vanities,
which is Tom Wolfe's blockbuster 1987 novel, which was about
social class and greed in New York City in the 1980s.
And I remember there being a very, very sort of
roguish journalist character, actually. And there's a there's a scene
that I remember, you know, being beautifully sort of written
and described by Tom Wolfe, which is this journalist turning
(14:49):
up at a job. I think it's when someone's been
killed in a car crash or something. And, um, the
journalist turns up at this job, just like with the
most horrendous kind of world, world ending hangover he's ever had. So,
I mean, that was the 80s, right? And the 80s
is what produced Trump like. And when you think of
the 80s and the glitz and glamour of Manhattan during
(15:11):
that time. The power suits, Wall Street stuff, all these
sort of braggarts and, you know, semi fraudsters or snake
oil salesmen who were nonetheless making sort of semi legitimate
money in enormous quantities, like someone like Trump, you know,
who was just sort of laying waste to, um, to
Queens and the Bronx with his developer father. That's Trump's world,
(15:31):
you know, the world of hustle and getting away with
what you can get away with and maybe sort of
doing business on the edges of legality sometimes. And I mean,
that that age, I suppose, was put to an end
by I mean, there was a recession, wasn't there, in
the 90s. So, you know, it's boom and bust. So.
S1 (15:49):
Oh, God. So that's what's going to take. Great. That's
what we have to look forward to.
S2 (15:52):
I've been I've been predicting a global recession for like
six months now. It's yet to come about. But I
sort of think I sort of think that's got to
be the natural, um, economic endpoint of, of the Trump administration.
But but I know nothing, and I'm most probably wrong.
S1 (16:07):
Okay. Well, I take issue with that. Absolutely. But just
to wrap up, I have to ask you, you know,
is is there an opportunity, I guess, in all of this?
And those of us who are watching on with fascination
and in horror, you know what role we really have,
I guess, in having provided the ascendance to these tech
bros and billionaires. That, of course, led to this wedding,
led to the Trump administration, arguably because, you know, as
(16:29):
you write, we are the ones who have handed these
tech bros an unregulated digital space in which they can
make their own rules as well as their fortunes. And
you say that, you know, Bezos and Sanchez, they're giving
us a show because they know we'll watch. So is
the inevitable like for those of us who are thinking, okay,
maybe we should reject this, maybe we should protest this. What?
We just stopped watching. What's the answer, Jack?
S2 (16:51):
I mean, I really don't know, because I think that
the enormous wealth and power. I mean, you know, the
the wealth of tech bros is one thing, but what's
an amazing and unprecedented about this generation of tech billionaires
is they don't just have wealth, they have our attention,
and they have our almost total attention. And almost there,
(17:13):
almost sort of able to totally monopolize our thoughts in
a way, you know, through the medium of the internet
and through the medium of social media. And, you know,
someone like Trump, someone like Elon Musk, they don't need
a newspaper. They don't need media. I mean, Elon Musk
has a bigger platform than any branch of the media
(17:34):
could ever give him. And that's pretty unprecedented. So it's
a concentration of power that's sort of I think we've
never really seen before in world history. And what I
find interesting as well is that we've given our attention,
we've given our data, we've given our most personal information
to these tech billionaires, which again, I think is really
interesting because, you know, there's this book I've been reading
(17:56):
by a guy called Timothy Snyder, and he makes the
point that authoritarian and sort of dictators, most of their
power is accrued by people giving it over to them
quite willingly. So that's what I think we've done with
the tech bros. But I don't know what the answer
is because they've integrated themselves into our daily lives, into
the very fabric of our lives in a way that's
quite difficult to resist.
S1 (18:16):
Well, thank you so much, Jack, for your time.
S2 (18:19):
Thank you for having me.
S1 (18:28):
Today's episode of The Morning Edition was produced by Kai Wong.
Our executive producer is Tammy Mills. Our head of audio
is Tom McKendrick. The Morning Edition is a production of
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(18:54):
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Samantha Selinger. Morris. This is the morning edition. Thanks for listening.
From the newsrooms of the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.
This is the morning edition. I'm Samantha Selinger Morris. It's Tuesday,
July 1st. There was a time, not so long ago,
when so-called quiet luxury or stealth wealth was in vogue.
You remember this is what Gwyneth Paltrow wore during her
(00:24):
ski slopes trial. Understated cashmere cardigans and suits cut just
so that you had to be in the know. To
know that these had come from the Row and Celine
and cost an absolute bomb. But the $50 million wedding
last week between Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez has marked
a new age. That's right. We are now in the
(00:45):
age of vulgarity. Today, senior columnist Jacqueline Maley on why
this celebrity wedding is different from all the rest, and
how we're all going to pay the price. Now, Jack,
if ever there was a sign that unabashed displays of
wealth are now back in again, it's got to be
(01:06):
the wedding of Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos to former TV
host Lauren Sanchez in Venice over the weekend. So take
us into, I guess, what's got to be one of
the first big questions, which is why are we interested? Like,
why do we care?
S2 (01:19):
I mean, I suppose it's been very much shoved in
our faces. You know, it's sort of seems to be everywhere,
like all the major outlets are reporting it.
S3 (01:28):
Well, not a detail or expense was spared at the
wedding of Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos and his wife, Lauren Sanchez,
in Venice.
S4 (01:38):
But of the 200 guests, about 70 were family. And
then lots and lots of A-listers from Oprah Winfrey, Gayle King,
the Kardashians, Tom Brady, Orlando Bloom, Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump.
But not her father, President Trump, though he was invited.
S2 (01:55):
You know, it's a spectacle. It's interesting. There's a lot
of famous people going. Venice is a beautiful city. It's
a city of love. It's got all the elements, right?
I mean, it's probably not that deep. We probably just
like watching it because it's kind of pretty and shiny.
S1 (02:11):
Okay, true. But I guess tell us, who are Jeff
Bezos and Lauren Sanchez? And just how crazy was their wedding?
Because your column made me do a bit of a
deep dive, you know, about weddings that had cost a
lot of money and been really outrageous. You know, Prince
William and Catherine Middleton's wedding in 2011, that was $33 million,
according to some reports. But tell us about this, because
(02:31):
this really does overshoot most of those weddings, if not
all of them in many regards.
S2 (02:36):
Yeah. I mean, I don't know how people come up
with these figures, I really don't. Um, and I guess
they're just guesses anyway. But the figure that was being
reported was that it cost $50 million, which seems like
a lot for a wedding, even if you're a billionaire.
S5 (02:49):
Expected price tag of nearly 56 million. The three day
celebration is one of the most expensive weddings ever.
S6 (02:57):
And that theme, apparently it started off as a Venetian
mask theme, very formal. Then halfway through it went into
a pyjama theme, and the guests at the ceremony yesterday
actually received goodie bags with Amazon slippers inside just for
this occasion. Of course, the bride, Lauren Sanchez.
S2 (03:14):
Yes. So Jeff Bezos is obviously the founder of Amazon
and has made a significant fortune with that extremely successful
company which pretty much owns, you know, the online home
delivery market and which was very much turbocharged by the
pandemic when everybody was getting stuff sent to them at home.
(03:37):
And of course, has some television now as well and.
S1 (03:39):
Owns the Washington Post, of course.
S2 (03:41):
Yes, of course, he's a media owner as well, and
was always, I think, a sort of a card carrying Democrat,
but has become a little bit more, um, associated with
the Trump administration. The speculation is that he sort of
needs to cozy up to the Trump administration to get
lucrative federal contracts for space stuff. And Lauren Sanchez is
a former TV journalist, a sort of former TV A
(04:02):
broadcaster who was previously married to another very wealthy man
and was sort of quite reasonably well known. But I
guess you would not say an A-lister. Before she met
Jeff Bezos, they were both married to other people, and
there was sort of a scandal that was picked up
by a tabloid where their text messages to each other
and they were apparently having an extramarital affair were leaked
(04:24):
into the public domain.
S1 (04:25):
Okay, now we're going to get into the connections with
Trump and the implications of that a bit later. But
first of all, just tell us, because there was a
backlash amongst many Venetians against this wedding. Why?
S2 (04:36):
Yeah, I mean, the backlash seems to be a little
bit multi-pronged. So there's just been a bit of activism
about it. Some of it I think is just kind
of general anti billionaire sort of anti wealth inequality type stuff.
So resentful of the fact that a billionaire can take
over a city.
S4 (04:52):
Tonight. Protesters shooting smoke flares off Venice's famed Rialto Bridge.
Several hundred people marching through the city's canals yelling Bezos
out of the lagoon. And no space for Bezos.
S7 (05:04):
Protesters are out as well, unfurling banners, staging mock weddings,
reminding the world that Venice has lost over half of
its residents since the 1970s due to mass tourism.
S2 (05:17):
Also, Venice is a city that is basically being claimed
by climate change, so they have a lot of environmental
problems because they're built on a marshy bunch of lagoons
and they're sort of sinking. Although the bride and groom
did make a donation, a charitable donation to an organization
that apparently tries to help the the Venetian lagoons. Yeah,
(05:38):
but I mean, otherwise, I think it's becoming quite an
unaffordable city for ordinary Venetians. So the cost of living
is very high and rents are very high. So I
guess the kind of reasoning or the logic is that
if you have these big, flashy kind of events, then
it makes it more difficult for ordinary people to live
their lives and also to afford to live in Venice.
S1 (05:56):
And you pointed out in your column that New York
magazine wrote that Lawrence Sanchez, in some respects actually represents
the aesthetic and pinnacle of the Mar a Lago era.
So what does that mean?
S2 (06:06):
You could say that the MAGA aesthetic, which is typified
by some of the women who work within the administration,
and it's a very newsreader kind of Fox News type aesthetic.
So a lot of primary colors, a lot of power suits,
very sort of done hair. You wouldn't say that it
was chic or elegant, but it was. But it's very
put together and it's highly, highly polished. So that is
(06:27):
vaguely speaking, what people talk about as being the MAGA aesthetic.
And someone like Lauren Sanchez. You wouldn't say that. She's understated. So,
you know, designers like Celine.
S1 (06:39):
The Ro.
S2 (06:40):
Yeah, those kinds of designers are very like they're almost
sort of brandless in the sense that it's just incredibly,
incredibly beautiful tailoring with incredibly luxurious fabrics and also unaffordable
for average people. But it doesn't sort of look like
much unless you know what you're looking for.
S1 (06:56):
And it's that real classist thing, like you've got to
be in the know to even know that it's the Ro,
you know, like the average person would very sensibly just think, oh,
it's a bag from Myer. Like it's just a plain
black bag, but. No, no.
S2 (07:09):
Yeah, it's just a grey cashmere sweater, but no, it's, um. Yeah.
And that that aesthetic was sort of called stealth wealth
or quiet luxury. And it was epitomized, I think, or
made very popular by Gwyneth Paltrow when she appeared every day,
sort of beautifully dressed, but in a very sort of
understated way. At the trial, when she was called to
give evidence, when that guy was suing her for bumping
(07:30):
into him on the ski slopes at Aspen or something,
suitably sort of one percenter like that. Um, so that
aesthetic is basically over, and I think even British Vogue
or maybe it was American Vogue recently declared, like, um,
chic is chic is dead, basically. So it's it's big,
it's brash, it's bold, it's in-your-face. It's a lot more
scantily clad, you know, a lot more body parts on display.
(07:52):
And nobody's trying to hide the fact that they've had
cosmetic enhancements to their body or their face.
S1 (07:58):
No, it really dovetails with, I guess, the social media
posts of I can't remember which which starlet or influencer
was it that just posted? Yeah, yeah, I got stuff done.
Here's exactly what I got done. Was it one of
the Jenners? Was it one of the Kardashians?
S2 (08:11):
I think it was Kylie Jenner. I hate myself for
knowing that, but. And she was sort of praised for
her refreshing honesty. That's right. Because often they're like, no,
I just drink water and, you know, get eight, eight
hours of sleep every night. And that's why my skin
is so good. But she was like, no, here's a
laundry list of stuff I had done. And this is
the doctor that I went to. Yes. So it's it's
(08:31):
a really, really different, um, approach to glamour and sort
of presentation, I suppose it's like they're sort of lifting
the curtain a little bit and they are being honest
where I think, you know, the older, more discreet kind
of type of starlet or celebrity had to keep up
this pretense that, um, it was all natural or it
was all it was effortless. It was effortless. They were
(08:53):
genetically blessed. Um, but these women are actually like, no,
I restrict my diet massively, and I spend a lot
of money starving. Yeah, I spend a lot of money
on plastic surgery and and that that itself is a
sort of real pop culture shift. That's quite interesting.
S1 (09:08):
Yeah, no, it's definitely turned. And I love the name
you've given to it because as you've written, you know,
this wedding is proof that we are actually in a
new age and it's the age of vulgarity. So tell us,
I guess what it means. Like, how might it affect
the rest of us? Because you refer to a famous
quote in F Scott Fitzgerald's book, The Great Gatsby. So
give us that quote and I guess, tell us, what
(09:29):
does this telegraph for what might come? Because, you know,
he quoted, of course, famously about careless people who smash things.
S2 (09:36):
Yeah. I mean, F Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby is
obviously the sort of this incredible American classic about a
generation of extremely wealthy sort of capitalists. You know, it's
set just before the Great Depression and, you know, it's
these great American sort of nation builders and capitalists, Gatsby
being one of them, who have made enormous amounts of
(09:58):
money from sort of plundering American resources. And in Gatsby's case,
of course, we learn by the end of the novel
that some of the, you know, the source of his
wealth is actually a bit shady and dodgy, and nothing
to do with sort of legal operations to do with
booze and stuff, because of course it was the era
of prohibition. So I was just kind of interested. Yeah,
I was just sort of interested in the sort of
(10:19):
comparisons there, because Gatsby is, of course, an outsider to
that world of extreme wealth. He grew up poor and
he sort of has come into it, so he always
feels like an outsider, and he's always a sort of
observer of that world. So the quote that I really
love was F Scott Fitzgerald talks about people who's rich
people basically who smashed up things and creatures and then
retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or
(10:42):
whatever it was that kept them together and let other
people clean up the mess they had made. And, um,
the idea of carelessness is sort of interesting to me
and the carelessness of these enormously wealthy people. And, you know,
Jeff Bezos, of course, and Amazon have been accused of
some less than ideal workplace practices, and Amazon's been accused
(11:04):
of union busting and exploiting workers, basically sort of creating
a kind of whole tribe of working poor within the
American population, all these people who work in Amazon factories.
S1 (11:19):
We'll be right back. And you also sort of connect
it to the political moment. You refer to Donald Trump
recently dropping the f bomb when he was referring to,
you know, an American ally. And you said that that
was sort of perhaps a reflection that the age of
restraint is over. Like it's not even valued anymore. Is
that right? And if that is, I guess, is this
(11:40):
something that's going to really dominate our political sphere, our
social sphere? Do you think?
S2 (11:45):
I mean, I was interested in that last week because
I think there's so much that's norm busting about Donald Trump.
And but we've had him around for so long that
the norm busting he does becomes really normalized. But that,
to me was just another line that was crossed that
he would speak about an American ally or indeed about
any country in a diplomatic, you know, in this in
a sort of diplomatic setting as the American head of state,
(12:07):
that he would he would drop the f bomb.
S8 (12:10):
You know what we have? We basically have two countries
that have been fighting so long and so hard that
they don't know what the they're doing. Do you understand that?
S2 (12:20):
It was a real convention breach, I think. And I've
no doubt that presidents, including Trump and many, many other
presidents swear behind closed doors. But to do it in
that public setting and to have such a sort of
public fit of pique and almost like a sort of
tantrum that was, I thought, just very unseemly and kind
of worth pointing out that this is another line of
vulgarity that we've crossed, and this is another norm that's
(12:43):
been busted, another convention that's just been cast aside.
S1 (12:47):
And I guess, politically, do you feel that this age
of vulgarity that you say that we're now in, do
you think it's reflected, perhaps in Donald Trump's latest, you know,
so-called big beautiful bill, which really is exemplified, I guess,
by tax cuts for the rich and then a reduction
of help for disadvantaged people. You know, perhaps with cuts
to Medicaid and so forth.
S2 (13:05):
It's almost like a novelistic moment, like you couldn't really
write it because we we've talked a lot about wealth
inequality in the United States. Sort of leading to the
current moment and the fact that the Democrats in particular,
were just not able to handle that or not able
to ameliorate it. And the Democrats, for better or worse,
ended up being seen as the powerful elites who didn't
(13:27):
care about the common man in America. And that's how
we've sort of ended up with Trump. That's the kind
of that's the line. Right? That's the sort of that's
the thing that we're often told or that we often
read and hear, is Trump bringing in this sort of
mega piece of omnibus legislation, which does cut taxes for
the rich massively and does basically smash whatever social safety
(13:53):
net the United States has, which is not much compared
to countries like Australia.
S1 (13:58):
Now, I know that your column really was focusing on
this age of vulgarity that we find ourselves in. And
I'm just wondering, you know, your piece had me look back. Well,
when was the last time we were experiencing an age
of vulgarity? And I thought, well, maybe it's the 1980s,
you know, bonfire of the vanities and, you know, Wall
Street traders and just excessive wealth and greed. And I'm
just wondering, you know, if indeed that was the last time.
(14:20):
That's arguable. Like, what do we know from that precedent? Like,
how long is this age of vulgarity going to last?
Come on, give us some answers. Jack. Haley. Where's your
crystal ball?
S2 (14:28):
I know, I was just thinking about bonfire of the vanities,
which is Tom Wolfe's blockbuster 1987 novel, which was about
social class and greed in New York City in the 1980s.
And I remember there being a very, very sort of
roguish journalist character, actually. And there's a there's a scene
that I remember, you know, being beautifully sort of written
and described by Tom Wolfe, which is this journalist turning
(14:49):
up at a job. I think it's when someone's been
killed in a car crash or something. And, um, the
journalist turns up at this job, just like with the
most horrendous kind of world, world ending hangover he's ever had. So,
I mean, that was the 80s, right? And the 80s
is what produced Trump like. And when you think of
the 80s and the glitz and glamour of Manhattan during
(15:11):
that time. The power suits, Wall Street stuff, all these
sort of braggarts and, you know, semi fraudsters or snake
oil salesmen who were nonetheless making sort of semi legitimate
money in enormous quantities, like someone like Trump, you know,
who was just sort of laying waste to, um, to
Queens and the Bronx with his developer father. That's Trump's world,
(15:31):
you know, the world of hustle and getting away with
what you can get away with and maybe sort of
doing business on the edges of legality sometimes. And I mean,
that that age, I suppose, was put to an end
by I mean, there was a recession, wasn't there, in
the 90s. So, you know, it's boom and bust. So.
S1 (15:49):
Oh, God. So that's what's going to take. Great. That's
what we have to look forward to.
S2 (15:52):
I've been I've been predicting a global recession for like
six months now. It's yet to come about. But I
sort of think I sort of think that's got to
be the natural, um, economic endpoint of, of the Trump administration.
But but I know nothing, and I'm most probably wrong.
S1 (16:07):
Okay. Well, I take issue with that. Absolutely. But just
to wrap up, I have to ask you, you know,
is is there an opportunity, I guess, in all of this?
And those of us who are watching on with fascination
and in horror, you know what role we really have,
I guess, in having provided the ascendance to these tech
bros and billionaires. That, of course, led to this wedding,
led to the Trump administration, arguably because, you know, as
(16:29):
you write, we are the ones who have handed these
tech bros an unregulated digital space in which they can
make their own rules as well as their fortunes. And
you say that, you know, Bezos and Sanchez, they're giving
us a show because they know we'll watch. So is
the inevitable like for those of us who are thinking, okay,
maybe we should reject this, maybe we should protest this. What?
We just stopped watching. What's the answer, Jack?
S2 (16:51):
I mean, I really don't know, because I think that
the enormous wealth and power. I mean, you know, the
the wealth of tech bros is one thing, but what's
an amazing and unprecedented about this generation of tech billionaires
is they don't just have wealth, they have our attention,
and they have our almost total attention. And almost there,
(17:13):
almost sort of able to totally monopolize our thoughts in
a way, you know, through the medium of the internet
and through the medium of social media. And, you know,
someone like Trump, someone like Elon Musk, they don't need
a newspaper. They don't need media. I mean, Elon Musk
has a bigger platform than any branch of the media
(17:34):
could ever give him. And that's pretty unprecedented. So it's
a concentration of power that's sort of I think we've
never really seen before in world history. And what I
find interesting as well is that we've given our attention,
we've given our data, we've given our most personal information
to these tech billionaires, which again, I think is really
interesting because, you know, there's this book I've been reading
(17:56):
by a guy called Timothy Snyder, and he makes the
point that authoritarian and sort of dictators, most of their
power is accrued by people giving it over to them
quite willingly. So that's what I think we've done with
the tech bros. But I don't know what the answer
is because they've integrated themselves into our daily lives, into
the very fabric of our lives in a way that's
quite difficult to resist.
S1 (18:16):
Well, thank you so much, Jack, for your time.
S2 (18:19):
Thank you for having me.
S1 (18:28):
Today's episode of The Morning Edition was produced by Kai Wong.
Our executive producer is Tammy Mills. Our head of audio
is Tom McKendrick. The Morning Edition is a production of
The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald. If you enjoy
the show and want more of our journalism, subscribe to
our newspapers today. It's the best way to support what
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(18:54):
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inbox every day. Links are in the show. Notes. I'm
Samantha Selinger. Morris. This is the morning edition. Thanks for listening.
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