Decline of the debutante

At St James’s Palace aristocratic daughters were presented to her when they were 17, the age considered ripe for marriage.

Before the First World War, its main purpose was to act as a social adjunct to political life. But after that, it had become a marriage market to ensure that young aristocratic men and women could select their spouse from their own circle of society.

The aim was to be engaged by the end of the season. Until the Second World War, an upper-class girl looked solely at marriage and motherhood.

Bred as a socialite she was given a rudimentary education focusing on the social graces such as dancing, drawing and singing.

She was expected to marry well, with no concern for a career or any personal ambition.

Only girls with a relation already presented at court could apply and a debutante or deb was a girl of an aristocratic or upper-class family who on reaching adult maturity “came out” into society at a formal “debut”.

Having been presented marked the end of her gauche girlhood and her rebirth as a sophisticated young woman. It was what Jessica Mitford, the most reluctant of debs, described as “the specific, upper-class version of a puberty rite”. 

But from this initiation ceremony, they learned how to behave in a grown-up world, having typically been demure and sheltered as children.

And underlying it were the qualities of elegance, good manners, belief in protocol and respect for Queen and country.

The 1920s debutante was presented wearing an ostrich feather headdress and a white dress with a long train: this was seen as a symbol of virginity and a form of wedding dress.

By the 1950s styles had changed and she was likely to be wearing pearls. The dresses were very old fashioned, but cost a fortune and there were endless fittings.

Even though the radical changes in fashion and lifestyles of the Sixties were only two years away, in that final year of 1958 they all still dressed to look like their mothers.

Gloves were short for daytime, longer for formal events and elbow length for evening. The etiquette was to keep them on while you danced but roll them back while you ate.

They queued nervously up the palace’s grand marble staircase and assembled on little gilt chairs in an antechamber, waiting to be called into the ballroom where the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh sat on twin thrones under a crimson canopy.

Once your name was called you curtsied twice: once to the Queen, then, after three sidesteps, before Prince Philip. You then left the room without turning your back.

The Season, known as “the party that lasted 100 days” ran from late spring right through to the autumn and consisted of events such as afternoon tea parties, polo matches, Royal Ascot, Wimbledon, Henley, the Fourth of June and the Eton/ Harrow match at Lords.

Many of the girls came from landed gentry who spent much of their time on their country estates.

So the Season also involved coming to London, where the mothers issued and accepted invitations to balls and parties.

They were eager for their daughters to be introduced to suitable young men – called “debs’ delights” – while discouraging any who could be dubbed with the following acronyms: NSIT (Not Safe in Taxis); MSC (Makes Skin Creep); MTF (Must Touch Flesh) and VVSITPQ (Very Very Safe in Taxis Probably Queer).

The balls and parties were held in grand town houses and stately homes but by the late 1950s many were held in hotels and flats.

The first spectacular ball of the Season was held in the Great Room at Grosvenor House.

Four hundred debs assembled with their parents in long white ball gowns and white gloves to dine and dance.

It was all a re-enactment of Queen Charlotte’s birthday celebration – with the debs’ nannies watching their mutating charges from the balcony.

When the birthday cake was brought to a halt in front of the guest of honour they all curtsied very low and rose simultaneously, the result of a rigorous rehearsal taken that morning.

But the Second World War put paid to excess and the cake was then made from dried eggs and by 1944 the ball was like a picnic, with guests bringing their own food and drink.

By 1958 the exclusivity of the Season was eroded. Such class divisions couldn’t last and ironically old blueblood families felt they were being overtaken by “new money”.

As Princess Margaret declared: “We had to put a stop to it. Every tart in London was getting in.”

One former deb recalled: “The parties were rather nerve-racking. You went into a whole room of people you didn’t know and held on to that sense of panic. Two girls couldn’t dance together,” she said, “you couldn’t dance by yourself and you had to wait to be asked to dance. If you weren’t, you were a wallflower”.

And behind the grandeur was the expense. Going out five times a week meant a lot of dresses while many mothers launching their daughters were war widows.

The stark contrast was very evident between the luxuries of the Season and the hardships of postwar Britain – rationing had only ended in 1954.

The 1956 Suez Crisis had annihilated her imperialist ambitions. And it wasn’t long before the arrival of pop culture, satire and the Pill (which put paid to the values of virginity).

In 1957 there had been a damaging attack on the complacency of the Royal Family by Lord Altrincham who felt it should have been “quietly discontinued in 1945”, making way for a “truly classless court” and that it was failing to re- flect the growing social changes in Britain resulting from the war.

Debs curtseying had become an embarrassing anachronism. Even the Duke of Edinburgh thought the whole thing “bloody daft”.

The Queen held out for one more year before following Palace advice to abandon it.

When the Lord Chamberlain announced this last royal presentation ceremony, there was a record number of applications from mothers.

Some 1,400 girls were presented for their “royal blessing” over three days.

They wore couture dresses by the likes of Hartnell, Balmain, Dior and Worth and they wore a selection of chiffon, silk-taffeta and organza gowns in gold and pink.

Though the royal presentations are long gone, rich families still keep the Season going across the world.

Today’s debs will include Chinese, Russians and Americans – and Queen Charlotte’s Ball has been held in Shanghai and Dubai.