Stars pack the Polo Lounge for Chanel and Charles Finch’s 17th pre-Oscar dinner

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. (AP) — Teyana Taylor, Mick Jagger, Kristen Stewart and Wagner Moura were just a few of the stars mingling on the patio of the storied Polo Lounge on the Saturday night before the Oscars. They gathered at the iconic spot at The Beverly Hills Hotel for the 17th annual pre-Oscar dinner co-hosted by Chanel and film producer Charles Finch.

On the red carpet, Jessie Buckley, who is the favorite to win best actress on Sunday, noted how intimate it felt with only a handful of photographers and reporters looking on.

“It’s like a prelude to tomorrow, right?” Buckley quipped. Her Matthieu Blazy-designed dress was embellished with dragonflies on the straps. She said it felt like a fairy tale.

The co-director of the animated musical “KPop Demon Hunters,” Maggie Kang, was excited to be in the mix, but also thinking about Sunday, when her film is expected to win best animated feature and best original song. There’s also the big performance of its hit song “Golden,” which producers have said will celebrate the bigger cultural phenomenon of the movie.

“It’s epic. It’s a lot of drama,” Kang said. “I had tears just watching the rehearsal. It was really amazing. It’s going to be a big cultural moment.”

A very starry gathering

The patio was packed with Oscar nominees, winners, filmmakers and celebrities mingling and sipping drinks. Billionaire Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez Bezos chatted with Sigourney Weaver and Jessica Alba, while Stellan Skarsgård found himself deep in conversation with Nick Cave. Elsewhere, Stewart posed for a photo with Taylor, and Nicole Kidman caught up with Bobby Cannavale and Rose Byrne, who also found her way back to her “Bridesmaids” co-star Maya Rudolph. Hours earlier, Byrne and Rudolph rehearsed a bit for the show at the Dolby Theatre.

On another part of the patio, Jagger made his way to “Sentimental Value” filmmaker Joachim Trier, Molly Sims and her film producer husband Scott Stuber spoke with “Love Story” star Sarah Pidgeon, who was sipping champagne, while “Marty Supreme” director Josh Safdie and his cowriter and co-editor Ronald Bronstein tried to make their way toward one another. A glass might have been a casualty of the meeting.

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Chanel’s long history with the movies

Chanel has been tied to cinema for nearly a century. Samuel Goldwyn famously invited house founder Gabrielle Chanel to Hollywood in 1931 to design dresses for the likes of Gloria Swanson. Decades later, she was working with French New Wave luminaries both on screen and off, including Jeanne Moreau, Romy Schneider, Alain Resnais and Louis Malle. And the collaborations continue to this day. As a nod to the era for Richard Linklater’s “Nouvelle Vague,” they recreated a haute couture bustier dress from a 1956 collection.

Chanel has also helped support independent filmmaking, including Stewart’s directorial debut “The Chronology of Water,” film restorations like Wim Wenders’ “Paris, Texas,” film festivals and burgeoning talent behind the camera.

“I felt, like, mutually seen and supported by these people since I was a very young person,” Stewart said. “Functioning in like, you know, this sort of industry, business, Hollywood slash fashion world as a kiddo is a bizarro, and with them it’s always felt incredibly authentic and sort of from a storyteller’s perspective, and so it doesn’t surprise me that they want to support storytellers.”

Finch started throwing parties around the Oscars about 30 years ago, mostly for international filmmakers who didn’t have anywhere to go, he said. The partnership with Chanel has helped make it one of the hottest tickets in town.

“Being on a film set reminds you that cinema is a universal language. On the film I’m working on now, the crew includes British, American, French, and Portuguese artisans — all united by one goal: to bring a story to life,” Finch said. “That spirit is what tonight is about — and how this dinner originated: celebrating cinema, storytelling, and the storytellers who make the magic happen.”

For more on this year’s Oscars, visit: