On July 21st, an anonymous blogger called Imaginary Socialite printed some thanks for keeping her—or his— identity a secret. “And everyone,” s/he wrote, “who received calls from the Post yesterday and refused to divulge my identity, I owe you some major sample sale, secret concert, after party password dish.”
Apparently, those bribes didn’t go so well, because today, Page Six pronounced an outing, claiming the blogger to be a young woman (and now, public figure) named Faran Krentcil.
But Page Six didn’t elaborate on their reporting of this item, so The Transom thought it might play its own game of Find The Socialite.
The website is registered, WhoIs says, to John Marc Imbrescia, who resides in Lynnfield, MA.
“I am the listed purchaser of that site,” confirmed Mr. Imbrescia by telephone. When asked if he was the proprietor, he said, “It is not my writing.” When asked who the writer was, and if he had attended school in Andover, Mr. Imbrescia said “I’m not available for comment on that.”
Mr. Imbrescia is, according to the official Andover student website, a member of the class of ’00.
Isolating this one piece of information as a place to start searching—odd, odd Andover!—does cut a swath through Manhattan’s fashion and gossip scene quit a bit.
Peeking around Andover, one finds a student at Andover High named Seth M. Krentcil. (He took third-term honors at Andover High in 2001! Mazel tov!) Mr. Krentcil shares a last name with another local, one Faran Krentcil, who was, according to Artnet.com, the art critic at one time for The Phillipian.
The Phillipian is, of course, the oldest secondary school newspaper in the United States. Isn’t that amazing? Who knew! It is the newspaper of Phillips Academy, which is located in Andover.
Ms. Krentcil went on to attend Duke, where she was a columnist for the school paper; it appears as if she graduated in the class of ’03. She apparently did a brief spell in PR, and began appearing fairly regularly in Patrick McMullan party photos in Manhattan beginning February 8th, 2005.
Ms. Krentcil is now a reporter at the dishy fashion site Fashion Week Daily, for which she regularly ventures out and about, leading her into the sort of environment where she would collect the sort of gossip and innuendo that appears on Imaginary Socialite.
When Ms. Krentcil was asked by phone if she were, in fact, the author of the site, she laughed, and said, “In fact, no.” When asked if she knew the name of the author of the site, she said, “Really I can’t talk to you about that. It’s not something I would share.” And when asked to elaborate, she said, “I really just can’t talk to you about that on the record.”
A denial! Drat! And after all that! And then The Transom was sad.
—Choire Sicha
