Interview

Back to the Oscars. At 2:32 p.m., helicopters circling the gray skies drowned the din of the BCs. Miley Cyrus attributed the style of her big phat wedding dress to The Little Mermaid. At 3:14 p.m., Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt tried to remember where they’d been when they’d heard about their nominations. “Somewhere in the world,” said Mr. Smith. “No, we were in Paris,” insisted the Mrs. . . . Need GPS? At 5:04 p.m., Penélope Cruz glided up in vintage Balmain. “It’s nearly 60 years old,” she said. “I saw it eight years ago at a place called Lily et Cie. And I thought, Someday I will come back and get this dress.” Cruz flushed when this oracle suggested the gown was an omen. La-la love her.

After the show, I raninto Denise Hale at the Mercedes fete at Montage. Sam Ronson, spinning, brought La Lohan in Vestal white. Hale, a onetime Mrs. Vincente Minnelli, used to host the famous Oscar party at Spago with Irving “Swifty” Lazar and was adopted by Graydon Carter when Vanity Fair inherited the fete, which this year moved to the Sunset Tower. Mrs. Hale enthused over Carter’s hosting chops: “He goes over every detail himself.” The VF party had a clear plastic tent half-open to diamond-dust views of Los Angeles. It was like a waking dream, as if you fell asleep reading the magazine. Elton John gushed over Anne Hathaway, who still had on the Vestal -palette dress. Reese Witherspoon led Jake Gyllenhaal by the hand.

Valentino hugged it out with Meryl Streep. Kate Winslet brought her parents (Dad in a funny brimmed hat). Helena Christensen downed In-N-Out Burgers. Josh Brolin and Diane Lane snuggled on a couch. And Jennifer Aniston swept into The Tower Bar very late and then dove back into the JL VF party to get John Mayer. When she returned, Peter Gabriel had bellied up to the bar, and Mayer, much la-la up in his swirl, sang Gabriel the first few bars of Gabriel’s Oscar-nominated song “Down to Earth.”

The next day, vestally flying back Virgin, I sat nextto a JL Brit charmer from VF’s website. He grew up near Twilight hunk RobertPattinson but denied a report I heard that mid-century babes hit on RP at VF. But at 3:00 a.m., just before he crashed, he said that Slumdog’s Dev Patel was still hugging the bar. The kids from the movie and Freida Pinto, some of the last to leave, danced Bollywood-style, “likely still on Mumbai time.”

Lastly, Interview feted 20 years of Patrick McMullan’s arty party photos for the magazine at Elaine’s,hosted by a preggers Kimora Lee Simmons, Iman, Jane Holzer, Anne Slater, Christophe de Menil, and Marisa Berenson, among fabulous others. At the party, before Patrick sang “Happy Birthday” to Elaine, Brigid Berlin, wearing a fluffy-fab Jackie Rogers top, graciously accepted my apology for fluffing a recent story about her. What a relief. I thought I might end up hiding in the loo.