Hours after Oppenheimer swept many of the top categories at the 96th annual Academy Awards, director Christopher Nolan rolled into the Vanity Fair Oscar Party just after 10pm with his wife and producing partner, Emma Thomas, his two sons, and two big gold Oscar statuettes, one in each clenched fist.
“I am soo happy for you,” Rebecca Hall screamed into his ear as he walked past.
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Trailing behind him was Steven Spielberg, who had presented Nolan with the best director Oscar, his first ever. Nolan wove through a crowd that included Tracy Ellis Ross, Allison Williams, Colman Domingo, Adrien Brody, LeBron James, and Finneas, who was clutching an Academy Award of his own. Soon, best actress Emma Stone, best supporting actress Da’Vine Joy Randolph, and best supporting actor Robert Downey Jr. would head up the (very) red carpet clutching hardware of their own.
That’s just a snapshot of this year’s Vanity Fair Oscar Party, celebrating its 30th anniversary as the city’s most opulent, decadent, impossible-to-crash soiree—we’re biased, so what! Held annually at a custom-built structure in the middle of two streets abutting the Annenberg Center in Beverly Hills, the Vanity Fair Oscar Party has long been the place where the winners show up, Little Gold Men–in–hand, to raise a glass to the year’s achievements in filmmaking. (This year, those glasses as likely as not contained Don Julio 1942 and Moët.) But the party is so much more as well: a fantasy canteen of Hollywood’s megawatt stars smashed against each other at a bar, a place where brahmins of Los Angeles industry and culture and politics can hobnob, and a showcase for rising stars who get a chance to meet their heroes. It’s where titans of different spheres of influence co-exist for an evening. Maybe just think of it as an issue of Vanity Fair that got sprinkled with fairy dust and magically came to life.
It’s the only room where Nolan’s triumphant victory lap might be missed by some attendees at the other end of the bar, simply because there’s whole lot of commotion around billionaire Francois-Henri Pinault (longtime owner of the Kering fashion empire, newish owner of CAA) and his wife Salma Hayak-Pinault. They were soon joined by Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez, with Sanchez in a pink gown whose train was one of the night’s longest—which is saying something. Bezos went to say hello to James Murdoch while Sanchez gave Jessica Alba a hug, and suddenly Michael Keaton was slapping Bezos a big high five, and then the Amazon founder and his wife were snapping pics with Kim Kardashian, Odell Beckham, Kris Jenner, and a sunglasses-clad Lenny Kravitz. Then Kardashian ducked over to the bar, said hello to artist Jonas Wood, and ordered a shot of tequila. Across the way, her half sister Kendall Jenner, wearing Maison Martin Margiela, was arm-in-arm with Ari Emanuel and his wife Sarah Staudinger. At another corner of the bar, Glen Powell asked Elizabeth Banks if she knew Charles Melton.
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