Vanity Fair Oscar Party

After the party are the after parties, and none is more exclusive than the Vanity Fair Oscar party. This year the party moved to the Sunset Tower after a year off.

Despite editor Graydon Carter's earlier claims of a smaller Vanity Fair Oscar party on Sunday night, the event permit filed with the CIty of West Hollywood, which CityFile dug up, says they're expecting a thousand people.

When Carter first announced that it would bring its usual Oscar party back this year, he said they were going to aim for a guest list of 650 instead of the customary 1,000-plus names. The move to pare down invites made sense given the recessionary times and the recent not-so-opulent mood at Conde Nast. But deciding who would get cut from the list — which, while full of celebrities, also includes more than a few advertisers who are currently being begged to buy ad pages — would have been a mighty chore.

This is the first year Vanity Fair is throwing the bash at the Sunset Tower Hotel (last year's party was cancelled amidst the writers strike; before that it was thrown for fourteen years at the restaurant Morton's). It's the same place where the magazine has thrown its Golden Globes party, so the party planners are familiar with the space. Morton's had a parking lot where they could set up a tent. But having spent some time at the Sunset Tower, it's difficult to imagine 1,000 people cramming into the hotel's lounge, bar and pool area all at once.

According to the NY Post, it was The Party be at, with guests leaving other bashes to come to Vanity Fair."The party" featured Kate Winslet clutching her Oscar, Vivi Nevo and fiancée Ziyi Zhang sitting with Brian Grazer, Wendi Murdoch and Phillip Dauman, and MySpace founder Chris DeWolfe huddling with Lyor Cohen at the inside bar.

Elsewhere, Madonna, Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher threw a party, as they did last year, at Guy Oseary's house, but with less success. Rosario Dawson, Nicole Kidman, Keith Urban, Chris Rock, Sharon Stone and Jessica Biel left early for the Vanity Fair bash.