Society Girls

As she shares the preparations of 21 privileged young women for their big night at Marianna Cerini Le Bal des Débutantes, discovers a reservoir of positivity, personal development and philanthropic thinking

Photography TIM GRIFFITHS

If you look up debutante in the Oxford Dictionary, you’ll find it defined as “an upper-class young woman making her first appearance in fashionable society.” But it’s much more than that, I find after spending four days with 21 such women in Paris for Le Bal des Débutantes. From the moment we meet to their gathering on the grand staircase of the Peninsula for a group photo before the ball, the debs are constantly in the limelight. Rather than the polite young women of yore introduced to a genteel high-society marriage market in search of a suitable mate, they conjure in my mind images from Hollywood. They give numerous interviews, run to fittings across town, sit for hours of hair and make-up, then even longer hours in photo sessions—not just…

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Tatler Hong Kong (Digital) - 1 Issue, February 2018

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