You might think the age of the aristocratic marriage market is long gone, and you’d be right, but not that of the debutante ball. Melissa Twigg meets a cohort of glamorous young women with a lot more than marriage on their minds
Who’d have thought a debutante ball would be a hotbed of feminism? Traditionally, these glittering events were designed to introduce well-born young women into society to attract suitable husbands, so they weren’t exactly the apex of equality and female empowerment. But try telling that to the 19 young women who recently made their debuts in Paris at le Bal des Débutantes, a glamorous group of lawyers, doctors, journalists, and actresses all possessed of a sense of destiny and a desire to play a role in changing the world.
“Oh, I definitely think it’s feminist. It’s about celebrating female talent—and we all care more about what we’re doing professionally or educationally than the way we look. And it’s just fun,” said True Whitaker, a willowy American journalism student who opened the night’s dancing with her father, Oscar-winning actor Forest Whitaker, in the ornate ballroom of the Shangri-La Hotel, Paris.
Le Bal, as it’s known, was a delicious spectacle to witness. Earlier, standing in the ballroom a few hours before True and her confrères were to be presented to Parisian society, my eyes drank in the old-world beauty of the venue and the lavishly dressed young women whose lace, velvet, and silk skirts were strewn across the Louis XV furniture on which they were posing, looking for all the world as if they had just fallen out of a fairy tale.
Rather than seeking Prince Charming, though, these beautiful women had more on their minds than boys, brands, and beauty products. They had spent the whole afternoon discussing modern politics. But more than their gold-plated CVs, political awareness, and multilingual skill, I was impressed by how generous they were with one another. Women have been taught for centuries to eye each other up as potential competition.
In covering similar events in the past, I have seen how this can quickly turn to infighting, and I have no doubt that had I been a deb at18, I would have been anxiously wondering whether I was as pretty and slim as my peers.
There was none of that when these debutantes gathered at the Shangri-La, formerly the Palais Iéna, built in 1896 as the home of Prince Roland Bonaparte. Instead, throughout their preparation, training, and photo shoots, the women kept stopping to admire one another’s clothes and to teach each other poses, keeping up a non-stop stream of easy compliments.
At one point, the wonderfully confident Julia McCaw, daughter of US telecoms tycoon Craig McCaw, attempted a ballet-like pose on a mantelpiece, one slender leg hanging precariously in the air as her Giambattista Valli gown floated around her. Half the girls were in hysterics, while the other half were documenting the moment in awe, with at least five shots uploaded to separate Instagram accounts. Envy, it seems, has gone the way of CD players and Blockbuster.