Face Lifted?

The Duchess of Windsor is 44 years old, has a large mole on the right side of her chin and jowls that are beginning to sag. Last week, as the royal pair sailed for the Bahamas, Manhattan newspapers reported that the Duchess would stop in the U. S. for a plastic operation on her face. Whether she intended to have her mole clipped, her nose cropped or her face lifted, no one could say. She had reputedly engaged rooms at Manhattan's Wickersham Hospital for the second week in September. Her surgeon was to be Dr. Irving Daniel Shorell.

Youngish, thick-featured Dr. Shorell has performed two of Edna Wallace Hopper's three face-liftings, has operated on a score of movie faces. His is one of the most lucrative branches of surgery. He makes one incision, in front of the ear, one under and behind it, sometimes a third along the hair line at the temples. With a blunt instrument Dr. Shorell peels the skin from the underlying muscles, as though he were paring a peach. In the muscles, loose from age like worn-out elastic bands, he takes a tuck with absorbable catgut. No tissue is cut away. Then Dr. Shorell redrapes the skin over the tightened muscles, snips away the loose skin around the borders in much the way a cook trims a pie.

Dr. Shorell claims that his operation is unique, for most plastic surgeons, he says, only tighten skin, pay little attention to sagging muscles, thus leave their patients with a masklike expression. Face-lifting is done under a local anesthetic, lasts about an hour and a half, is practically bloodless. Patients usually leave the hospital in four days, some of them wearing hats with veils or scarves tied under the chin to hide the scars. Only painful part of the operation is the bill, which may run anywhere from a few hundred dollars to $25,000, depending on what a patient can afford.

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