Vanity Fair Cannes party lacked celebrity turnout

Vanity Fair’s Cannes gathering on May 17 was described by Showbiz411 as a party with few celebrities and a crowd weighted toward advertisers at the Tetou pop-up on Cannes beach. The entertainment site said the event, held during the 79th Cannes Film Festival, lacked the kind of A-list turnout long associated with Vanity Fair’s Riviera parties. Showbiz411’s account cited Instagram posts from attendee Carl Tabor and said the guest mix included Meta-linked attendees and members of Qatar’s ruling family. Vanity Fair had already shifted some of its Cannes footprint this year, including a separate opening lunch with IHG Hotels & Resorts at the Carlton Cannes on May 13. ### Where was the party held this year? Tetou was the venue cited in Showbiz411’s May 17 report, which said Vanity Fair’s annual Cannes party was held at a revived Tetou pop-up rather than the Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc. The outlet said the event took place “way out on Cannes beach,” marking a change from the party’s more established Riviera setting. (showbiz411.com) Roger Friedman of Showbiz411 had reported on May 13 that Vanity Fair’s Cannes party had been moved from the Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc to the Tetou revival on the outskirts of town. In that earlier item, he described Tetou as a revived brand linked to the former beach restaurant in Golfe-Juan, near Antibes. (showbiz411.com) ### Who did Showbiz411 say showed up? Showbiz411’s May 17 item said the guest list included “the ruling family of Qatar,” Meta-related attendees using video glasses and business figures including Bernard Arnault and Vivi Nevo. The report said an Instagram account from Carl Tabor described a “cute girl” filming with Meta glasses while a man with a bright light accompanied her. (showbiz411.com) Carl Tabor’s quoted Instagram post, as reproduced by Showbiz411, also said the party had been held for “the last 15 years” at Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc before this year’s relocation. Showbiz411 used that post as the basis for much of its on-the-ground description of the event. (showbiz411.com) ### Which names were missing from the room? Showbiz411 said “no celebs, lots of advertisers” in its description of the party and wrote that there was a “scarcity of A list names.” The outlet specifically asked where festival fixtures such as John Travolta, Vin Diesel and James Franco were, presenting their absence as notable given their visibility elsewhere in Cannes this year. (showbiz411.com) The same outlet had previewed that possibility four days earlier. In its May 13 report, Showbiz411 said the reworked event would be “extremely diminished” and questioned which guests would attend. ### Was Vanity Fair absent from Cannes overall? Vanity Fair was active at Cannes before the May 17 party. (showbiz411.com) IHG Hotels & Resorts said in a May 13 release that it partnered with Vanity Fair for the Cannes Opening Lunch at the Carlton Cannes Beach Club ahead of the festival’s official opening ceremony. The company described that lunch as “star-studded” and named guests including Gillian Anderson, Alex Pettyfer, Lucas Bravo, Emmett Scanlan, Anthony Boyle and Maika Monroe. (showbiz411.com) John Ross, Vanity Fair’s director of editorial projects, said in the IHG release that the opening lunch was in its fourth year. That event and the later Tetou party appear to have served different roles in Vanity Fair’s Cannes schedule, based on the public descriptions from IHG and Showbiz411. ### What does this say about the Cannes party circuit this year? (ihgplc.com) Showbiz411 linked the Vanity Fair turnout to a broader reshuffling of Cannes social events. Its May 13 report said former Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter was due to host a separate party at the Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc with CAA’s Bryan Lourd and Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei on the following Tuesday. (ihgplc.com) The 79th Cannes Film Festival runs through May 24, and festival-linked parties, premieres and sponsor events are continuing across Cannes and nearby Antibes. Vanity Fair’s next public-facing festival appearances, if any, are likely to surface through company partners, attendee posts or festival coverage in the days before the closing ceremony. (ihgplc.com) (showbiz411.com)