No wonder: Hughes herself has trouble determining whether the Pink Line brand and her individual person are divisible in a meaningful way. She works alone, with the help of part-time interns. She also brings Pink Line into her home, where “Salon Contra” artist discussions usually draw a dozen or more people. It’s an exciting life, but it’s no way to run a business. And so now, with The Pink Line Project firmly established on Washington’s social radar, Hughes wants its organizational structure to grow up, too. What it needs next, she has decided, is a mission statement.

One evening earlier this month, Hughes assembles a dozen of her “mainstays” at her 14th Street NW condo to enjoy an appetizer buffet and champagne before heading to a gala that will celebrate the Corcoran Gallery of Art’s new contemporary exhibition program. The art-filled apartment is very, very pink. She has a swing that’s pink and a surfboard and laptop and scooter that are all pink. Hughes commissioned Cory Oberndorfer, a D.C. pop artist she has championed, to illustrate her walls, which he painted over with a giant, pink Hokusai tsunami wave. Artists Kelly Towles and Brad Chriss have both contributed murals. Another, Zach Storm, once stayed at her house to watch her cat for a week, and painted her ceiling while he was at it. Hughes is a serious enough collector to keep a makeshift storage system in her home for the work that she cannot display. But what she does show trends toward the extremely playful—and the pink.

At $150 per ticket, the Corcoran event attracts an elevated crowd. Hughes prices her own parties in the low double digits; often, they’re free. “How is an art party where people pay $10 or $20 to attend different from where they pay $150 to attend?” Hughes offers. “They still pay exactly the same amount of attention to the art. I doubt the people paying $150 are any more likely to come back to the museum.” In fact, the museum gala has a lot of overlap with Hughes’ warehouse party. There’s conceptual music—tonight courtesy of Bluebrain, an electronic duo performing a piece inspired by one of the evening’s featured artists, Spencer Finch. (Naturally, Bluebrain has done previous Philippa parties, most recently the one at the Phillips Collection.)

No matter where the Philippa parties take place, it’s also a pretty good bet that many of the party-goers don’t self-identify as members of the art world. For them, Hughes pretty much is the art world—or at least the gateway to it. At one point she refers to herself as the “ambassador” to that world. She also calls herself a “connector-person.” Of course, she’s sure to hang air quotes around both terms.

Some people, alas, don’t want to be connected. The Corcoran event, especially, draws some art-world Brahmins who don’t buy Hughes’s brand of populism. Izette Folger is one of them. Like Hughes, she is a member of the host committee. Unlike Hughes, she comes from Best Part of Waking Up money. After hearing that I’m writing about Hughes, Folger pulls me aside to describe a slight her sister, filmmaker Nora Maccoby, suffered at a Salon Contra event she helped to stage. Maccoby had arrived at Hughes’s home early only to find Hughes still in curlers, so to speak, noshing on pizza, says Folger. (Hughes says she missed the point: “That’s why it’s successful. Because there’s no pretension about it.”)

“Sometimes the Internet can be a dangerous place that gives people a false sense of power,” Folger says, decrying the reach of social media in the hands of people like Hughes. “People follow these people when they have no background or education in art or architecture or literature or humanities. It’s a party crowd [that follows Hughes]. It’s not a group of intellectual or sophisticated people. They’re like party wraiths.”

Standing near a conveyor belt that delivers hors d’œuvres to the Corcoran party’s guests, Hughes deflects praise from half a dozen people who thank her for the ball. She is blunt, friendly and unfailingly smiley to each of them. “I didn’t do anything. I’m just here.”

The idea of mixing party and exhibition doesn’t bother Jeffry Cudlin in the slightest. As the director of exhibitions at the Arlington Arts Center, he’s worked with Hughes for the gallery’s best-attended events. “Wreckfast at Tiffany’s” led Cudlin, a Washington City Paper contributing writer, to “recognize the power of Philippa.” Some 900 people showed up for the graffiti exhibit. The cops shut down the opening. Hughes is now an AAC board member.