'Vanity Fair' Preps for Its Budget Oscar Party
Ohmahgaw — the Oscars are next weekend! Are you not, like, so excited? We can't wait to get together with our girlfriends and watch E! for 14 hours straight before the big event. And even though we don't stand a dog's chance in Chinatown of getting in, we're especially excited for Vanity Fair's post-party, where only the cream of Hollywood's most fuckable crop are allowed entry.
The Vanity Fair party at Mortons with its well-documented reputation as the evening's most exclusive, star-studded party comes with a price tag estimated at $2 million (the magazine's PR team didn't respond to our requests for comment). In past years, the party has featured a 30-foot-long, 10-foot-tall myrtle topiary in the shape of the magazine's title, lighting by lighting-designer-to-Buckingham-Palace Patrick Woodroffe, and tables set with Asprey accessories and custom-made engraved enamel lighters.
But the price of the party also includes dollars spent long before the doors to Mortons swing open. Cond Nast, the mag's New York publisher, flies as many as 30 staffers to Los Angeles to prepare for as long as three weeks; they stay at the Beverly Hills Hotel and drive rented cars. (While low-end car rentals start around $50 a day, you can bet these folks aren't driving the cheapest models, and the hotel's guest rooms start at $410 per night and go way up from there and it doesn't offer a group rate.)
Pricey — and that's not even considering the cost of having all the female staffers' nether regions groomed and shaped to match the topiary.
