Lauren Sanchez Besos’ new look
For better or for worse, I feel compelled to write about Lauren Sanchez-Besos' style. Perhaps it’s because I saw her at the Dior haute couture show and thought to myself, totally unironically, ‘God, she’s never looked better.’ Hate for billionaires (valid) and ageism/misogyny (not valid) aside, Lauren seems particularly polarising for the public in terms of her fashion. Fashion critic Die Workwear has been accused of only complimenting the dress of those with good politics, and I want to avoid doing the same. Unfortunately, you can be a person who represents terrible things and still look good while doing it.
Lauren attends the Dior haute couture show in January 2026.
Lauren’s Paris look was good because it leaned into the excesses of oligarchical style with elegance. I saw some people citing a ‘mob wife’ aesthetic; however, to me, the duck-egg blue suit, tiny boxy bag (aptly named the Dior Lady), and modest hemline brought it back from the brink of nouveau riche bad taste into old-Hollywood-inflected luxury, plain and simple. Sure, the fur front-panel is reminiscent of a certain type of gilet donned by Cheshire housewives (see Lauren Simon, actual Real Housewife of Cheshire, attached), made in China under questionable circumstances, available in any number of boutiques and marked up 120%. Despite this, Lauren’s tasteful up-do and stud earrings help tone down these associations. When I compare this outfit to her earlier work, the Law Roach effect is immediately obvious. If this outfit determines her ‘future direction’, I can even see her becoming a tastemaker of sorts, even in circles that for now label her as tacky and pornified.
I think a lot of the negative sentiment around Lauren’s fashion specifically has to do with the feeling that someone with more means, connections and resources than almost anyone on the planet ought to look less cheap. It feels, somehow, like an insult added to moral injury that not only is she at the eye-watering top of the 1%, but she won’t even dress like it.
Lauren doesn’t seem to be knowingly embracing tackiness as part of her persona in a kitschy, subversive way. There are so many ways to look “cheap” that are fun, exciting, artistic and expressive. Perhaps this is an impossibility for today’s Lauren by definition - she never could achieve this effect because of her socioeconomic position. She’s ‘Alive Girl’ in pet-nickname only, not in charisma or presence.
To me, she has always appeared to be dressed as though she’s arrived somewhere popular with tourists, walked into a little shop in the crowded old town, and walked out with whatever resortwear defines that particular holiday ‘vibe’. Consider the bedazzled Ibiza girl in Y2K Cavalli, the breezy Santorini chick in white broderie anglaise dresses, or the St Barths babe in a matchy-matchy floral twin-set. These are the sorts of pre-packaged, two-dimensional dress identities that define the surface level ‘aesthetics’ of our time, and arguably these represent the antithesis of meaningful, interesting and distinctive personal style. Of course, for celebrities relying on professional stylists, this concept is always somewhat artificial anyway – the illusion of personal style is created through curation and the proxy vision of someone with genuine taste and talent, but that doesn’t mean we forgive the rich and famous for falling short of what we expect of them.
Lauren’s pre-Law style could be considered a reflection of Amazon's philosophy. Straightforward, no frills in the user experience, frictionless and ultimately less about individual discernment and more about maximising visibility, pre-selected products and unremarkable additions. Unnotable outfits in this vein include a rhinestone mini-skirt and bralette combo worn during the week of her engagement party, a Marshall’s discount rack worthy dusky pink prom dress, a swirly boob-tube that could have easily been bought from clubwear fast-fashion brand Jaded London, and a black lace ensemble that, while cohesive and undoubtedly flattering, disn’t edgy enough to be considered ‘goth-ish.’
Her recent style evolution, however, tells a different story. In my opinion, Lauren looks her best when she embraces a late-40s, early 1950s ‘New Look’ approach. It allows her to be consciously sexy, with cinched waists and taut pencil skirts, without sacrificing elegance. Her houndstooth bar-suit is another triumph - though I could live without the Balenciaga glasses (Cristobal is turning in his grave over that gaudy, gold sans-serif monogram). The New Look is described as having the following effect on silhouettes: “the waist [is] now nipped in, and the breasts pushed up.” (Hall-Araujo 2020: 134), and a popular book released in 1959 advises readers (assumed to all be wives) “to wear constraining clothes, especially after five o’clock. You're not meant to suffer, but the sensation should be one of constraint rather than comfort” (Fogarty cited in Hall-Araujo 2020: 138).
This refusal of utilitarianism also symbolically reoriented society towards pre-war gender roles in which women were “feminine”, “glamorous,” and “ornamental.” Christian Dior himself characterised women as “temptresses” (Theodoulou 2023), and the New Look was therefore designed through this lens. Given that one of the most recurrent criticisms levelled at Lauren tends to focus on her Barbie-doll-like proportions and extensive cosmetic procedures, the New Look style reveals an ever-relevant double bind of femininity as it demonstrates how the same aesthetic codes that secured Dior's canonisation in fashion history become grounds for mockery when a woman's own bodily interventions - rather than a designer's artistic vision - is held accountable for their perpetuation.
The New Look adjacent style is a lot less obvious than a lot of her other looks, and perhaps that is exactly what she needs to embrace. We already know she represents the apotheosis of what ‘nouveau riche’ is defined as, but does that mean she has to dress like it, too? I keep having nightmarish flashbacks of her Oscar de La Renta 2024 Met Gala gown, which looked like a playful bathroom tile design, or perhaps a wall decal from Etsy, carefully tagged everything BUT ‘Chanel-inspired’ to avoid triggering the counterfeit detection filters.
Lauren and Jeff at the 2024 Met Gala.
Given what Dior's 'New Look' connoted at the time of its original introduction — a return to pre-war opulence, an extravagant disregard for post-war austerity and material restraint, and a fundamental disconnect between the insulated fantasy world of elite fashion and the actual conditions of most post-war women — it seems fitting that this is the style legacy Lauren is adopting most successfully, even if such an embrace cannot offer her moral (or even aesthetic) redemption in the eyes of many.