Dear Gossips,

Last Friday I posted about Oscar parties and how the Vanity Fair Oscar party may be losing its claim to being the place to be after the Oscars. On Thursday, The New York Times published a piece – “It Was the Hottest Oscar Night Party. What Happened?”– that VF clearly took exception to because they ended up disinviting the NYT from attending this year’s event. It’s Oscar party inside baseball, I f-cking love it. 

There were a LOT of people at Vanity Fair on Sunday night, literally hundreds of celebrities, including most of the Oscar winners and nominees, like Lady Gaga and Glenn Close, and also Taylor Swift. So, yes, it’s still a valuable guest list, people still want to go and have their picture taken. It is not, however, the most exclusive. And it’s probably not the one most people are the most excited about. VF used to be the main course. Now it’s a really, really good appetiser. Most people don’t skip the appetiser – that’s the good news. But some people just go straight to the main course and the downside for Vanity Fair is that the main-course-only celebrities are BIG names. The main course, it would seem, is now Beyoncé and Jay-Z’s Gold Party. If the Gold Party is the main course then, it means that there are a significant number of celebrities, most of them actually, who are only entitled to the appetiser. And the irony of all of that is how this new party hierarchy, and the place Vanity Fair now occupies on that hierarchy, illustrates former VF editor-in-chief Graydon Carter’s Importance Index and Seven Rooms theories of fame. 

The Importance Index is how celebrities rank each other. Let’s say, for example, that Meghan Markle gets a call from Amal Clooney and Priyanka Chopra. Who she calls back first determines the standing. As for the Seven Rooms, think of fame as a narrowing corridor leading to an elusive members’ room. Every celebrity wants to keep going farther down the hall, unlocking door after door, one room leading to the next, each room getting smaller, more exclusive. Seventh room residents, however, are rare. And it’s hard to maintain your spot there. There was a time when an invitation to the Vanity Fair Oscar party was pretty close to that seventh room. Now? It’s maybe door #4 or 5. Still good, but not the best. Still a place where everyone passes through to get to the next and the best. Vanity Fair is now the party you pass through to get to the better one. For the major stars, the super celebrities, they don’t even have to pass through it anymore – they have access to a shortcut to take them straight into a better room. And of course there are those who are destined to remain in rooms #3 or 4 or 5 without ever advancing. 

Here’s Noah Centineo at the Vanity Fair Oscar party on Sunday night. High level of thirst on this one. Is this the best room he’ll ever be in? 

Yours in gossip,

Lainey