Byrdie Bell at Charlotte Ronson's winter 2012/13 runway show. (Owen Hoffmann for Patrick McMullan)

You might catch her sipping a cocktail during Miami Art Basel or front row at Charlotte Ronson, but the girl works too! Miss Bell has been featured in several, well-received independent films—and her modeling career is nothing to scoff at either! That svelte physique and those jutting collar bones have been snapped in Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, L'Official and V Magazine. The Observer just had to know what this blonde bombshell was up to for fashion week:

You’re surrounded by stylists, editors, celebs, publicists—the works! Who has your dream job this week?
The show DJs and music curators. Working with a designer to put together a seventeen-minute set that enhances the theme and atmosphere of the collection, seems like it would be a lot of fun!

Does it get exhausting? Do you have to bail on the fun sometimes?The energy surrounding fashion week is infectious and exciting. It can feel overwhelming, so I try not to look at it as an entire week. I make sure to take days off and do nothing fashion-related and avoid doing something at night if I have done something involved during the day.

What are your five must-have fashion week commodities?
SmartWater, sunglasses, Lumene 5 minute SOS Cream, my BlackBerry and ballet flats.

Now you’re still modeling, will you be working at all this week?
Everything in the industry seems to shut down in order to focus on the shows. I had a shoot scheduled for Thursday and one pending, but the first has been rescheduled and other postponed due to fashion week craziness.

I hear rumors about some fun nightlife plans? What will be the best after-party?
My agency ONE Management always throws the best parties. Tonight they are hosting one at Electric Room with Vs. magazine that I’m excited for.

If you could co-host a fantasy fashion week event, what would it be?
I’ve had dreams about designing a collection with the late Michael Jackson. There are so many creative avenues outside of music that I wish we had gotten to see him explore. Obviously he’d have to do a private show at the after party!

Bell, Bosworth and Aselton try On some shades for size.

While it seemed most of the action at the Sundance film festival had been happening at night behind colossal bouncers, The Observer caught wind that there was an equally exciting, yet slightly bizarre, scene taking place in the light of day: celebrity gifting suites. We took the opportunity to start our day a bit earlier to see what all the commotion was.

First stop: The Bertolli Meal Soup Chalet Hosted By Gen Art

• New York's own Byrdie Bell let us ride shotgun as she had her war paint applied by the Finns from Lumene Cosmetics, from whom The Observer dodged a graciously offered full male makeup treatment: "Don't you want your eyes to pop like hers?" (We kind of did.)
• Justin Long squeezed through a pack of iPhone wielding moms to pick up a pair of shades gratis from the Solstice team, who had just successfully equipped Kate Bosworth, Lake Bell and Katie Aselton—none of whom could determine if they liked skiing over snowboarding.
• Andie Macdowell's still got it. Like, really still has it.

Next stop: Talent Resources gifting suite (someone told me they had free Cream of Wheat samples)

• Bumped into producer Malcolm Pullinger of Wholphin and McSweeny's fame, who joined our investigation into these Cream of Wheat rumors.
• SNL's Nasim Pedrad leaned over a tall counter to snag herself some shwag from Sean John, noting that she really likes "the boy stuff, how 'bout that cardigan?" The team was all too happy to oblige.
• Cream of Wheat CENTRAL!

Moving right along: The Gansevoort gifting thing

• Are you a celebrity? Do you have feet? Do your naked feet need Sorel boots? These were the hard hitting questions being lobbed at John Heder by boot babes as he laced up.
• Everyone is wearing these freaking boots, getting the vibe that everyone may also be a little drunk.

Looks like there's a football game on? Back to the soup mongers to check in on the Giants

• OH MAN Christina Hendricks - hang on though, who's this dude she's with? Googling...Googling...she's married!?!
• Luckiest man in the world, Geoffery Arend everybody!
• Nap time.

Nursed back to health, The Observer hopped a cab back to main street to see what The Bing Bar had to offer

• Is that Andrew Keegan? Where the heck has that guy been? Oh right - practically living at The Bing Bar.
• Cobra Starship, expressing that they indeed had the capability to "go to eleven, if necessary" serenaded the crowd with more than their fair share of sweeping arpeggios.

Park City Live: Let there be Deadmau5

Deadmau5 takes Park City Live by storm.

• Waiting for Deadmau5, aka. Joel Zimmerman to assault the stage with his signature brand of electronic dance music, we run into Tenjune's Eugene Remm at his table stageside: "Can you believe this shit man? They have a pour limiter on our bottle service!" The Observer momentarily commiserated with the frustration of not being able to drink more than one shot of Patron simultaneously.
• Uh oh: the sound system is struggling. Zimmerman takes the stage.
• Promptly blows 3 speakers.
• Still somehow lights the place on fire, despite kind of phoning it in.

A quick pitstop at Chris Masterson's birthday party, and we're headed back to Tao

• We copped a squat on a banquette with the hard-to-miss king of clubs Noah Tepperberg, as he reigned over a roundtable in the house he built. We canvassed Noah on how he got here, who after promising to reveal to us at a later date told The Observer, "You don't want to know how the fuck I got here." We absolutely did.
• Fresh off the premiere of his film Red Hook Summer, director Spike Lee set up shop with a hulking posse directly in front of DJ Sinatra's dj booth, immediately proceeding to do their thing.
• Our ears are broken.

Fresh off her recent misdemeanor assault charge, comely fashion writer Kelly Bensimon arrived at the Openhouse Gallery in Soho on Thursday night, March 19, wearing a pair of striking black heels that lace up the leg.

"I love putting them on!" gushed Ms. Bensimon, co-star of the Bravo reality series The Real Housewives of New York City. "Look, the little bow!"

The fancy footwear was appropriate. Ms. Bensimon was there for a party celebrating the limited-edition release of designer Brian Atwood’s new book, Role Play Rene. The book features Tony Duran photographs of the actress Rene Russo wearing Mr. Atwood’s various shoes and, according to a press release, “embodying the power of the woman she portrayed in Thomas Crown Affair.” Blown-up images from the book were hung throughout the expansive gallery on Mulberry Street.

"Brian's from my home town,” noted Ms. Bensimon, an Iowa native. "When I found out he was showing here, I was like, 'Welcome to the neighborhood!'"

Socialite Olivia Palermo snaked through the crowd of snapping cameras in a pair of 6-inch olive-colored heels. "Of course these are Brian’s," Ms. Palermo said. "When you find a good shoe, they are an investment—they’ll take you anywhere!"

At the center of the room, the designer Mr. Atwood, his younger brother Zachary Stemer and his partner, Nate Berkus, of Oprah Winfrey Show fame, had the floor for photos.

"There's been a lot of buzz about the girls that wear his shoes being very culty about them," Mr. Berkus later told the Daily Transom. "It's nice to see New York turn out for [Brian's] work, for something that's not advertised all over the place every day. We're two very creative people, very much in line with our own goals, our own vision. It's great to see his project come to life like this."

At that point, a barrage of blondes broke through the party, through a curtain of camera flashes. Headlining the group was the socialite Byrdie Bell, the co-host of the evening. "I would love to talk to you about anything except questions," Ms. Bell said, before being carted off for a photo shoot of her shoes.

Toward the end of the party, designer Dani Stahl made an appearance. She was not wearing heels. Her boots? Not Mr. Atwood’s.

"I'm wearing Miu Miu," Ms. Stahl said. "I would wear him, though!" she added. “I would!" she insisted, looking off in Mr. Atwood's direction and raising her fist, triumphantly: "I will wear him!"

But then there is the shameful practice of advertising glittering guests who have not in fact confirmed that they’re attending.

This is what happened on Saturday, May 31, at Gallery Bar on the Lower East Side, during a fund-raiser for Artists for L.W.A.L.A. (Living with a Life-Long Ambition), a philanthropic organization that gets young people involved with Africa.

A press release for the event had promised 42 names, including habitual gala-goers Dabney Mercer, Byrdie Bell, Olivia Palermo, Ally Hilfiger, Alexandra Richards, Nigel Barker, Richie Rich and others.

But not one showed—not a one! Not even Kristian Laliberte, the event’s publicist, deigned to make an appearance.

So what went wrong?

“I think that the mix-up must have been that many of the expected attendees thought that the event was a typical summer fund-raiser in the city occurring during the work week,” said Mr. Laliberte’s partner, Timo Weiland. “Bottom line, I am thinking that the explanation is a leaky datebook combined with a few of the people not having been invited or reminded.” (Mr. Laliberte could not be reached.)

“Well, they definitely didn’t R.S.V.P. since this is the first I heard of it,” said Alan Rish, whose clients include Lydia Hearst and Ally Hilfiger, both of whom were listed as confirmed guests.“Lydia was with her boyfriend on Saturday, and maybe she would have gone, but she never even knew about it,” he said. “And Ally is out of town, so she definitely wouldn’t have been attending.”

Ms. Palermo’s publicist, Caroline Curtis, whom The Observer reached by phone, said, “Olivia had no recollection of being invited or R.S.V.P.-ing to the event.”

“Anybody who has been in New York longer than five minutes knows not to rely on tip sheets,” said Mr. Rish. “To expect Lydia or Ally to show at an event on the Lower East Side in the summertime is just unrealistic.”

“No one gets very upset about it, but it does reflect on Olivia directly because it makes her look flaky or not committed if someone uses her name as a definite and then she doesn’t show,” said Ms. Curtis. “So I wish this weren’t the case, but as a publicist I know that it absolutely happens.”

“She finds it a little frustrating, because then people think that she’s being petty and say, ‘Oh, she couldn’t show up for her own charity,’” Mr. Rish told The Observer.

Cinema Society founder Andrew Saffir, who hosts many of the city’s high-profile events—most recently organizing the Iron Man after-party with attendees like Gwyneth Paltrow, Diana Ross and Michael Kors—said, “Gosh, no, that is absolutely not O.K. No one wants their name on something that they don’t plan on attending. If you are advertised to attend, you’d certainly want to follow through.”

“Even I have found my name on tip sheets for things I either declined or hadn’t responded to,” he said.

ialeksander@observer.com

When Park Avenue Peerage posted an item about the Young Fellows of the Frick Collection gala yesterday, the site’s commenters went a little nuts.

One commenter said, “Byrdie Bell rocks, nobody even comes close!
“I have known Serena [Merriman] my entire life and the girl is 100% completely full of herself,” said another. And there was this one: “Byrdie, Tinsley, Barbara look stunning!” And this one: “What happened to Annelise? Tinsley is sweet, Byrdie is sweet albeit cro-magnon, even Lydia is nice but she is always on autopilot and just needs to CHILL, however, Annelise is unequivocally a bitch.”

Okay, so remember that little Socialite Slapdown site that we mentioned we were running? Why not let your frustrations—or admirations—out on there?

Round I results are in and according to all of you, Ivanka Trump beats out Minnie Mortimer in the Brains category, while Olivia Palermo won the Brio match against Paul Johnson-Calderone!

Want more? Okay. Fabiola Beracasa triumphed over Marjorie Gubelmann Raein in the Beauty category and Zani Gugelmann over Maggie Betts. Go and see the rest of the results for yourself!

Today’s—air quotes—1 p.m. Rebecca Taylor show in the Salon at Bryant Park had three distinct, carefully orchestrated parts. One involved folks sitting in chairs and watching Ms. Taylor’s clothes go back and forth. Another section was comprised of models wearing the clothes and stomping on a gold-sequin runway. And the third component, of which we were an integral part, included some 50 people holding meaningless purple flashcards for 45 minutes in a fountainside corral.

Told of the glorious lapis water cloud dresses and silk dandelion ruffles waiting for us inside, some people were seemingly too excited to notice the sudden flight of publicists and list checkers. Never mind the muffled booms of music flooding the foyer.

“Show’s closed!” one security guard eventually yelled, holding a stanchion in midair like a cattle prod. “What? How can that be?” asked a tall blonde woman wearing a merlot-colored fur jacket under a brown fast-food-style fold-a-cap with red piping.

After tossing purple cards into the nearest trash cans, the hoi polloi saddled up in front of a wall of screens broadcasting the proceedings. Probably due to a mix of frustration and slight embarrassment, when a model broke a heel on the runway and had to remove her purple pumps, several castaways forced loud guffaws.

It can be hard to discern the gist of a collection from a monitor. (Though, to be fair, peeping yards upon yards of lapis organza and poppy silk is relaxing business.) So, we relied on members of the cool clique to convey their sentiments.

“[Ms. Taylor’s] one of my favorites, always—so feminine and so romantic and frilly and girly. I love it!” said former model Beth Ostrosky, who is engaged to shock jock Howard Stern. Her famous fiancé, she added, is “into my clothes.” (Ms. Ostrosky, 35, was wearing a white trench.) She also loves Fashion Week because: “Oh, gosh … it’s all exciting and fun!”

Fauxcialite Byrdie Bell, meanwhile, was easy to spot in a sequined red beret. She decreed Alice Temperley's show "gorgeous," Carolina Herrera’s “amazing”and “loved” Ms. Taylor’s. “There was a piece that was my favorite. It was a long sweater over sort of a vintage dress—or a slip, really—that I was into,” she said, referring, we think, to what press materials called a “patched cream lace tee with cashmere boyfriend sweater and patched skirt.”

Asked what she likes about Fashion Week, the 22-year-old aspiring actress replied: “The theatrics! The drama! The show! The fact that it is a show. I like shows.”

Before the interruption, Ms. Hilfiger, the 22-year-old daughter of the designer Tommy Hilfiger who herself dabbles in design and fine arts, had been describing a sentiment she shares with a small subset of female New Yorkers: women who are born of wealth, committed to various charitable causes and creative pursuits, but who claim they are weary of the flash of Patrick McMullan’s cameras, in search of a more … bohemian sensibility. These are not Upper East Siders with pageboys and pearl chokers, sitting on museum boards but living below 14th Street, in their own Petit Hameaux replete with easels, dress forms or turntables.

Call them “sohemians”—or perhaps “fauxcialites”—for the very word “socialite” causes them to recoil or turn pale and nervous, as if met with a disgusting smell.

“I think it’s pretty narcissistic of these socialite girls to worry so much about how they’re going to look when their intentions should just be about giving back,” Ms. Hilfiger said of her more high-maintenance sistren, sliding her naked heels forward on an ebony neoclassical coffee table. “I can’t imagine having a blow dryer or a curling iron in my hair more than, like, twice a month!”

In dark jeans and $50 white T-shirt (designed by Izzy Gold, 26, a downtown designer-DJ who was lounging in a nearby armchair), Ms. Hilfiger appeared the quintessential fauxcialite. An alumna of failed reality show Rich Girls, she has created a capsule collection for Mr. Gold, whose father is a successful New York restaurateur, and painted. She did some fund-raising for an Ethiopian relief organization, with her best friend Liz Mayer (she texted Ms. Mayer to get the charity’s exact name, the Fistula Foundation), and also supports the Race to Erase MS, “because my aunt had it,” but in a low-key kind of way. Ms. Hilfiger admitted she likes getting dolled up for black-tie parties—“I am a girl!”—but insisted she prefers spending a night out with a small coterie of friends, under the radar, at some place like GoldBar.

Elettra Wiedemann, 24, the “face” of Lancôme and daughter of actress Isabella Rossellini, is another young lady scorning the “socialite” label. “I just don’t think it has as much gravity as it used to—it’s just a loosely applied term to anybody,” she said in a phone interview. “The culture has become so celebritized that if you’re not an actor, if you’re not a musician, or if you’re not a model or something like that, you’re just branded a socialite.”

Next fall, Ms. Wiedemann, who has also modeled for Abercrombie & Fitch, Bill Blass and Ferragamo, will move away from Greenwich Village, where she was born and raised, to matriculate at the London School of Economics. She plans to get a masters degree in science and biomedicine, donating spare time and money to SELF, a nonprofit organization that builds solar-powered facilities, including hospitals and irrigation wells, in Africa. Like her fellow fauxcialites, Ms. Wiedemann said she has little interest in joining the glitzy New York benefit circuit. “I think I’m too much of a loser to do that!” she said with a laugh (charming self-deprecation being a fauxcialite trademark). “I love being behind the scenes of a charity.”

Ms. Wiedemann said she satisfies herself socially with small dinner parties in people’s apartments or drinks at Irish pubs. This is more appealing than going to “fabulous parties,” as she put it, because “I’m really a quiet, private person. I love meeting people and engaging people, but unless I feel very close to a cause, I don’t really try to put myself out there.”

The Young Lions' Whimper

New York’s well-established charities and institutions—the Met, the Public Library, New Yorkers for Children among them—have long courted young women with lustrous last names, impeccable style, rich pals, savvy social skills and abundant daytime hours to devote to event planning.

These days, however, loyalty among young patrons of many New York charities and institutions seems to be waning. The New York Public Library’s Young Lions Dance Party in November 2007 had only 77 young patrons on its committee, down from 106 the previous year, and only 11 were returning.(“We reconfigured the event,” was the explanation Gayle Snible, an spokeswoman for the library, gave The Observer via email.)

Recently, meanwhile, Douglas Blonsky, president of the Central Park Conservancy’s board of trustees, instigated the formation of a new Junior Advisory Committee in order to ensure that the maturing pool of park patrons—best known for donning pastel hats at an annual, venerable outdoor luncheon—gets restocked. “We wanted to put together a network of young and energetic and professional New Yorkers who would dedicate time and effort to support the conservancy’s mission,” said Kate Sheleg, a public-relations representative.

One high-profile New York socialite, who asked not be named, said she has noticed that a lot of young people are moving away from the typical “Upper East Side socialite” circles that have traditionally undergirded such institutions, because they don’t want to be judged by the merciless, anonymous standards of cyberspace. “The Internet had a huge effect on all people who were social last year,” she said, referring primarily to Socialite Rank—the Web site that was shuttered last April not long after a complaint was filed with the Manhattan district attorney’s office, which alleged the site had stolen socialite Olivia Palermo’s identity by publishing a forged letter from her. “That’s why people don’t really get involved.”

“In the charity circuit, which was traditionally a way for people to give away money, you’re finding more ambitious, social people,” said Mr. McMullan, the party photographer who has been covering New York high society for over 25 years. Muffie Potter Aston, an old-guard New York socialite in her mid-40’s, acknowledged that, in many cases, “a higher profile raises more funds when you are involved in a charitable endeavor.” But this rule, she added, has a serious caveat. “My mother told me at an early age, ‘You’re born with your reputation and you die with your reputation.’ When people try to cut corners and they try to just put their names on committees without producing any fruitful results, they get found out.” Ms. Aston said. “Not only is it the wrong thing to do, but after a while people know who you are and your reputation is the one that becomes tarnished.”

Lydia Hearst, the 23-year-old high-fashion model and publishing heiress, said the stigma of a New York socialite has become so severe that staying away from high-profile fund-raising events can seem like simple pragmatism. “There are charities that I’ve avoided specifically, not because I don’t agree with the cause, but just because of the party itself,” she said, emptying several packets of raw-cane sugar into a cup of coffee at Bouchon Bakery in the Time Warner Center the other day .

“I think it’s refreshing in a sense to see a backlash against the girls who are going out and behaving poorly and being disgraceful,” she continued. “Not only to themselves, but to their families.”

Asked what comes to mind when someone says the word “socialite,” Ms. Hearst replied: “Girls that forget to put on panties and are just very extreme and over the top when hitting the social scene. They’ll essentially go to the opening of a door.”

Fabiola Beracasa, the Venezuelan-born daughter of Veronica Hearst, likewise suggested that New York’s charity circuit has become dangerously overrun with young, press-hungry patrons who are in it for all the wrong reasons. A few hours before speaking to The Observer by phone, Ms. Beracasa participated in an hourlong conference call with the other board members of a venerable New York institution she preferred not to name. “We were talking about a committee list, and all of us were discussing who puts in the work,” she said. “At the end of the day, you know that three-quarters of these people are not doing anything.”

'I Don't Have the Time'

Fauxcialite Charlotte Ronson, the daughter of society doyenne Ann Dexter-Jones and real-estate mogul Laurence Ronson, asserted that, even if she wanted to be a part of the charity-gala circuit, she simply doesn’t have the time. In addition to remodeling her eponymous jewel-box boutique on Mulberry Street in Nolita, she has been preparing her fall 2008 collection, which was shown on Monday, Feb. 4, in the Altman Building—a project she said she has overseen “every step of the way.”

Ms. Ronson was sitting in a banquette at Koi, an Asian-inspired restaurant in the Bryant Park Hotel, on a recent frigid afternoon—“it’s close to my office,” she said—and bemoaning the labor that goes into the traditional socialite enterprise. “[You have to] pick the dress, get your hair done, your makeup done, your nails done, pick the purse to go with the shoes and to look totally different every time,” she said in a deep, emotionless rasp. After a moment, she stared down at an untouched cup of green tea and whispered, “Yeah. I don’t have the time.”

Ms. Ronson, 30, was wearing a baggy, purple-plaid flannel shirt, her tousled locks pulled back in a nylon-covered elastic band, and looking more like a Seattle barista than the member of a family that collectively got 422 McMullan credits in 2007 alone. “My mother, when we grew up, she kind of said yes to everything,” she said, recalling Ms. Dexter-Jones’ once-breathless social agenda. “And then you get to a point where you don’t really have a life of your own; it sometimes becomes more about the party and the event than the actual cause.”

Ms. Ronson would prefer not to plan and attend extravagant parties in support of her two pet causes, the Nest Foundation, which combats the sexual exploitation of children, and the Humane Society; she’d rather do things like donate products, or use faux fur in her fashion collections (she had brought a swatch of it).

“I have a friend who calls it the retail mafia,” said fellow fauxcialite and aspiring actress Byrdie Bell, 22, regarding lines like Ms. Ronson’s. She mentioned Lola, a “lifestyle brand” started by a few Southampton natives and favored by fauxcialites Alexandra Richards, daughter of Rolling Stones rocker Keith, and Devon Aoki, daughter of Benihana founder Hiroaki. Chrissie Miller, the daughter of celebrity astrologist and Internet entrepreneur Susan Miller, has a line called Sophomore. Lucy Sykes Rellie, the daughter of an English aristocrat and the twin sister of Vogue scribe Plum, designs a line of luxe children’s clothes. And of course there is Tinsley Mortimer and her line of handbags for Samantha Thavasa.

Not to suggest that wealthy young women are abandoning charities in droves to become fashion designers, but …

Ms. Hilfiger, for one, sees such individual endeavors as a point of personal pride. “You have to prove yourself to the world,” she said. “It’s like, this [collection for Izzy Gold] better be fuckin’ perfect. It’s my name on the line, and I’ve gotta prove to other people that I can do it and that I’m serious about it.”

Asked how she would respond if someone were to accuse her of having an easy life, Ms. Hilfiger sat erect, narrowed her gaze and said: “If they did, I would just be like, ‘Come with me for a day and see if you could do it!’

“I just feel that I’m a very driven, motivated person,” Ms. Hilfiger said of her work ethic, pausing to gaze in the direction of a spotlight mounted near a wall of windows. “If I’m stagnant for a certain amount of time, I tend to not feel happy. I don’t feel like myself. There’s so much creative energy in me.”

Leave it to the Post to title the piece “Byrdie of Paradise,” whose pictures of the 22-year-old are attended by—what else?—exotic birds. But beside the photos, readers learn not only that Ms. Bell understands that affection is often expressed with puke, but in the lyrical styling of her musical-social boyfriend, James “Bingo” Gubelmann, too: “Bella was bored to death at South Beach/Not one celebrity spotted in days/She was tired of her mood/Lunchin’ on vegan food.” The article even goes so far as to compare the “youngest in an almost Biblical line of society jewels” to Brooke Astor, Mona von Bismarck and Lauren Hutton.

But for all her apparent Upper-East-Side-ness (she inhabits a two-bedroom co-op in the tony ‘hood), Ms. Bell has some serious downtown gal in her as well. Not only was she once a Goth, Astor-Place-Kmart vidster before coming out at the Infirmary Ball in 2003, she now wants to move south of 14^th Street. Ms. Bell also plays Nintendo and watches French porn, which is pretty hot in an anti-Tinsley kind of way. (Video games and flesh flicks for francophiles aside, she claims to “appreciate and understand what [Ms. Mortimer] does.")

In the end, though, Ms. Bell wants to strut her stuff in films. She’s even scored extra parts in the forthcoming Rolling Stones documentary Shine a Light and in the Sex and the City movie. Of being a cinematic background filler, the socialite says, “Now when I watch movies, I notice the extras. It’s really interesting to see people who are pretending they’re not focusing on what they’re doing but are trying really hard.” Oh, how apropos.

As the product was passed around the luncheon table, reports WWD, Ms. Creel asked the owner of Rodial, Maria Hatzistefanis, if she is Greek. “That must be why you have such amazing skin,” she said to the dermatological entrepreneur. “No, no no! It’s the Glamatox,” Ms. Hatzistefanis shot back. Apparently none of the well-heeled ladies-who-lunch would disclose their anti-ageing routines, but Ms. Creel did suggest that her few facial lines are the result of being “embarrassingly behind on my Christmas cards!”