Wintour’s not comingming
THE invites to Vanity Fair’s Oscar party are in the mail, and the magazine’s new Editor-in-Chief, Radhika
Jones, is the only person named on the invitation. It was speculated that Anna
Wintour, the powerful editorial director across all Condé Nast titles, would take control of the March 4 event when longtime VF editor Graydon
Carter retired in December. But Wintour won’t even be attending. She’ll be in Paris for fashion shows.
“The party will be pretty much the same as last year and the year before,” one insider said. “Same venue. Same team organizing it.”
Carter, on vacation in France, won’t be attending, but his longtime director of special projects, Sara Marks, and her team have been working on it for months.
Marks has some detractors — mostly guests who tried to bring a plus-one even though the invitations are very clear that isn’t allowed. Courtney Love, at the height of her fame in 2001, was so angry that she couldn’t get her uninvited manageranager into the party, she wentnt out-outside to the media andd said, “I’ve got an importantnt an-announcement to make: Sara Marks is a c--t!”
Party veterans say thee glamorous Los Angeless gala has lost some of itss fun since moving from Morton’s to Sunset Tower Hotel, and then to its current tent at the Wallis Annenberg Center on Santa Monica Boulevard.
“The guest list has grown from 800 to 3,500,500, and the big stars still come, but they don’t stay,”ay,” said my source.
“They get their pictureure taken, and then head off to other parties. Madonnna’s [party] is the hottest est ticket.”
Look for changes nextext year when Jones — andnd Wintour, with her Metet Gala experience — willill have time to put theireir own stamp on the event.t.