NEW YORK－It was 9 p.m. on October 31 and already a crowd of A-list revelers and the photographers who love them were inside the club Bungalow 8 for a Halloween party. Stepping through the velvet ropes, Fabiola Beracasa, the sexy, voluble socialite who is the Venezuelan-born daughter of Veronica Hearst, was dressed as glittery Medusa.

As the photographers sprung into action, Ms. Beracasa, one of the party's six hosts, gamely struck a variety of poses. She slinked through the crush of bodies to chat with her friend Tinsley Mortimer, another much-photographed girl-about-town.

So many parties, so many party pictures. Yet to hear the newest wave of socialists tell it, the businesslike grind of going out nightly is increasingly a platform for creating a business.

Women like Ms. Beracasa(creative director of an estate jewelry company), Ms. Mortimer(designer of her own handbag line) and many others are exploring a new socialite end game－one in which they become a brand with mainstream recognition.

They are spinning off businesses that may one day provide some cash for the time an inherited fortune runs dry or a Palm Beach marriage goes down in flames, or simply as a means of personal fulfillment.

「The idea is to turn this all into something,」 said Ms. Beracasa. 「You get to a point where you've created a brand, and you can branch out from there.」

The gold standard for the self-branding socialite is Tory Burch, 40, who developed a line of sportswear and accessories into a mini empire, now with five stores, in just two years. And this despite the collapse of her marriage to Christopher Burch, a venture capitalist who helped finance here label initially.

Other players include Celerie Kemble, an interior designer who married a money manager in 2005, and is building a line of furniture; Lucy Sykes, a former fashion editor whose Lucy Sykes New York collection is sold at Barneys and Saks Fifth Avenue; and Nicole Young, a former publicist who has a line of dresses.

「All my clients would send me clothes and say, 『Wear this when you are out. It's the best kind of publicity,'」 Ms. Young said. 「People for all these years have been capitalizing on my visibility for their own gain. Why shouldn't I be able to capitalize on it?」

Never have so many women been so focused on leveraging social exposure for commercial gain.

「The girls today are more aggressive,」 said Catherine Saxton, a New York publicist, citing their willingness to hop onto the red carpet and preen for photographers.

Given their backgrounds, why do socialites like Ms. Beracasa, 30, even bother to work? 「Life can be very vapid if you have everything,」 she said. In her early 20s she may have been content to travel and shop full time, but that gets old. 「I think a grown-up can understand you need to accomplish things in life to feel good about yourself,」 she said.