People

By Guy D. Garcia

You can take the girl out of the Social Register (which they have), but you can't take the Social Register out of the girl. The formal charity affair in Manhattan last week was ever so just so--she in her pearls, taffeta debutante dress and full-length white kid gloves, and her brother Philipp Molzer in white tie and tails. After all, the honored lady of the evening was Sydney Biddle Barrows, 33, the New Jersey socialite whose family lines reach back to the Pilgrims at Plymouth Rock. Barrows primly described the evening as "a lovely affair." Never mind that the "Mayflower Madam," as she was dubbed in headlines, was charged last year with running a posh prostitution service out of a Manhattan town house. Apparently the indiscretion did not much bother the 300 guests who paid $40 apiece to bolster her legal-defense hope chest. Not that Barrows was totally forgiven. "She was stupid," chided one guest, "she used credit cards." Some things are just too vulgar to overlook.