Nicole Kidman and Sophia Loren at Armani Pre-Oscars Social gathering

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — On the end result of an intense and monthslong Oscars awards season, Hollywood took up the place it left off earlier than the pandemic and have become a maskless, glittering free-for-all.

Style labels like Saint Laurent, Chanel and Gucci and powerhouse expertise companies like CAA competed with tech Goliaths like Apple to attain the perfect eating places, most elegant occasion areas and the rarest specimens from among the many superstar coterie.

The consensus shouldn’t be but in on who gained the race for greatest wingding. Some events have been so scrupulously non-public — like CAA’s on the San Vicente Bungalows membership on Friday — that solely megacelebrities like Elon Musk, Leonardo DiCaprio and Taylor Swift have been invited to graze a buffet of roast salmon, pulled pork, hen curry and mini meringues.

However Hollywood additionally hungrily eats its personal historical past, as the author and producer Mitch Glazer as soon as wrote, and infrequently upstages the expertise itself.

A working example was Saturday’s occasion for the reopening of the Giorgio Armani flagship on Rodeo Drive, a glamorous mosh pit by which lots of of these from the Juvéderm and micro-mini face-lift set jostled for respiration area.

They sipped Veuve Clicquot Champagne or iced Limoncello and ogled the numerous present individuals — Adrien Brody, Mira Sorvino, Annabelle Wallis, Miles Teller and Dylan Sprouse — who got here out on a cool California night. Irrespective of whom anybody was speaking to, all eyes have been on the entrance door awaiting the arrival of Nicole Kidman, the night’s honored visitor.

A ripple ran via the room when Ms. Kidman — an Oscar nominee for her function as Lucille Ball in “Being the Ricardos” — swept in at 5:52 p.m., surrounded by a safety phalanx and Kevin Huvane, the co-chair of CAA, in fullback kind on the lead.

Wearing a black Armani pantsuit, a décolleté embroidered bustier and flats (“I needed to put on man’s garments,” she instructed this reporter) to offset her commanding top, Ms. Kidman instantly sequestered herself in a nook wedged between a case of velvet clutches and a rack of beaded frocks.

Along with her unlined and poreless, bisque-doll complexion and her startled Dresden-blue eyes, she appeared too preternaturally glamorous to suit her characterization of herself, in a current Self-importance Truthful article, as an “oddball.”

“Oh, I’m an oddball,” Ms. Kidman stated flatly, when requested about her self-assessment. “I’m an introvert. I believe laterally — all the time have and all the time will.”

Ms. Kidman is 54 and first starred as a number one actress in a movie 33 years in the past. Such a feat of show-business survival would appear arduous to surpass. But 20 minutes after she arrived, the gang parted once more, this time for the arrival of Sophia Loren, who made her first cinematic look seven a long time in the past.

It doesn’t matter what doomsayers might say a few crumbling dream machine, the impress of those luminous beings on our cultural consciousness is without end. Certain, shifting applied sciences will alter how fantasy is delivered. The urge for food for it would all the time stay.

Take into account a spontaneous scene that erupted when the mob clamoring outdoors the Armani occasion noticed a tuxedo two-tone convertible Rolls-Royce cruising up Rodeo Drive, prime down and Mark Wahlberg behind the wheel. All of the sudden these within the crowd surged into the road to encompass the car, “The Day of the Locust”-style, with smartphone cameras hungrily fixing him of their sights.

Mr. Wahlberg grinned like a tanned and benevolent deity accepting tribute, as the road echoed with the cries of strangers shouting his title: “Mark! Mark! Mark!’’

Unique Creatures at Chanel

Relying on one’s vantage level, girls both have all of the enjoyable or are caught with the heavy lifting in the case of Oscars dressing.

Harvey Keitel was high-quality cruising into Chanel’s annual pre-Oscars dinner on Saturday, held within the gardens of the Beverly Hills Lodge and its storied Polo Lounge, carrying a primary black jacket and sandals. It was socially acceptable for each Charles Finch, the co-host of the starry, hot-ticket night, and Jamie Dornan to put on white shirts with the collars left deeply unbuttoned. Chris Pine elicited oohs and aahs in nothing extra particular than a rumpled linen go well with out of Don Johnson’s “Miami Vice” closet.

Girls don’t have it almost really easy, even with Chanel munificently offering a few of them with their occasion glad rags.

“I instructed my stylist I’m frightened of this gown,” stated Minnie Driver, referring to a slinky creation with a floor-length black skirt, a decent beaded coral prime and stylized pagoda shoulders. “She instructed me, ‘You need to be frightened of this gown! It raises your sport.’”

Nonetheless, Ms. Driver appeared Instagram prepared, and that was the duty.

And so, as one after one other feminine visitor queued up in opposition to a wall of philodendron for a photograph op, the end result was a spectacle that in all probability exists nowhere else outdoors this metropolis in the course of the Oscars.

The scene resembled a kind of Discovery Channel specials about unique reef fish or the snow crane — an inflow of outstanding beauties disporting themselves in essentially the most spectacular method.

Right here was Kristen Stewart placing saucy, sullen tough-guy poses in her Chanel tweeds. Right here was Rashida Jones in some way making a matronly frock look contemporary. Right here was Sofia Coppola demonstrating Coco Chanel’s adage that luxurious shouldn’t be the other of poverty however of vulgarity. Right here was Kate Beckinsale along with her hair in a tower of what gave the impression to be brioches sucking air in little guppy breaths that stored her lips photogenically parted.

And right here was Joan Collins powering throughout the purple carpet on a pair of four-inch “Dynasty” heels. With a sequence of appearances lined up for a brand new memoir she composed aloud in diary kind, as she defined to this observer, Ms. Collins confirmed no proof of getting misplaced her urge for food for fame, its trappings or the hassle required to carry on to each.

Requested what the key was of her abiding ambition to stay a participant, as she approaches 90, Ms. Collins paused and slowly lowered her minklike lashes. After a second, her lids popped up once more, and she or he had a solution.

“I might say, Eat life,” Ms. Collins stated. “Or life will eat you.”