How Lauren Sanchez Showed Jeff Bezos the Winning Way of the "Kardashian Playbook"
And why this results in billions of dollars of investments in the Middle East
One thing you’ll learn more about in my forthcoming book is that John F. Kennedy became president in part due to the media chess game played by his “dad-ager,” Joseph P. Kennedy, who had been a brilliant and ruthless businessman with ties to Hollywood and DC.
It’s no surprise to any of us that these sorts of Kris Jenner-esque figures are remembered by history as composites of mythic anecdotes. One legend associated with the senior Kennedy is how he predicted the 1929 stock market crash by getting his shoes shined in Manhattan and listening closely when the kid at his feet began espousing finance tips. He determined that if a working-class young’un is running around with such expertise, then the market was likely oversaturated. He liquidated much of his portfolio just in time. These sorts of on-point predictions aided Kennedy in accumulating and consolidating power over the course of his life – including, we might guess, his belief in the presidential potential in his second son.
Last week, the illustrious fashion critic Louis Pisano wrote an incisive piece for The Slow Factory called “The Shape of Power,” highlighting some of the eyebrow-raising guests present at Kris Jenner’s recent 70th birthday bash, which was hosted at Jeff and Lauren Bezos’s Beverly Hills mansion. (The party theme was James Bond, “a winking acknowledgment of Amazon’s new ownership of the 007 franchise,” Pisano writes.)
Pisano points out that, beyond the impressive profile of the party’s hosts, the presence of additional billionaires like Oprah Winfrey, Bill Gates, and Mark Zuckerberg – combined with public knowledge of Kim’s social and business to the Kushner family – might suggest political and fiscal alliances that are only strengthening before the backdrop of the US’s rightward shift. In 2026, SKIMS will be opening fifteen stores In Israel, news that Pisano observed even as the rest of fashion media kept mum. Ultimately, he concludes of the party’s elite social constellation, “everything is political,” and indeed it is. I want to further flesh out this case study, which is about:
