Fashion & style: One false move and 250 years of debutante tradition

Debs aren't what they used to be. I should know because I'm standing in front of the bandstand in Hyde Park, witnessing the launch of the 2002 social season - as you do. This involves no fewer than 67 debutantes past and present, dutifully lined up and waiting to be photographed in their bejewelled finery, apparently oblivious to the fact that it's broad daylight and a distinctly crisp spring day. The upper classes will do anything for publicity, it seems.

As if to prove the point, one perky young thing drops her long sheepskin coat from her shoulders to reveal a gravy-brown, ultra- toned black-bikini- clad body underneath. Her shoes - towering wedge- heeled rope sandals - are, it occurs to me, rather too obviously fashionable to be worn by the comfortably aristocratic, astonishingly bad accessories being the very essence of debutante style. "Where on earth is the girl's mother?" a concerned - and thoroughly upstaged - onlooker wails as flashbulbs pop.

Having spent the early hours at the Dorchester Hotel, where the requisite comedy headwear had been donned and orange make-up applied, our heroines, all jolly good sports, marched on foot through Hyde Park Corner underpass to get here, wearing the very same dresses they originally came out in. Someone should tell Madonna that nothing beats a brisk walk in a ballgown to get the old blue blood flowing - there's not a limo to be seen. Clothes range from the fashion fabulous - vintage Zandra Rhodes, Ossie Clark and Antony Price doesn't look quite so great as it does on the pages of Dazed & Confused - to the more predictable - Emanuel Ungaro and, of course, Tomasz Starzewski. The latter, purveyor of the most overblown taffeta affairs, would surely have disappeared without trace by now were it not for the patronage of such grand English ladies, united in their obsession with class and the fact that, with a little help from their good friend Jo Hansford, they are unanimously blonde.

Upon arrival, debutantes have formed their own proudly anachronistic club: members ooze confidence, however ridiculous they seem. Non-members are treated as if they were the ones missing out on something: a rich, titled husband, for example. Where did I go wrong?

The social season is under threat. Not possible! - I hear you all cry. Not only are magazines such as Harpers & Queen and Tatler more interested in J.Lo's wedding than the Snow Ball, but also Peter Townend, the man responsible for hand-writing invitations to some 200 chosen young women to the annual Berkeley Dress Show, which opens proceedings, died last year. Now a committee of those who care about such things choose who must see and be seen, which, clearly, isn't quite the same. One false move, insiders say, and 250 years of tradition will go down the (gilt-edged) pan.

Small wonder, then, that the grand old debs of yesteryear have rallied round. Frances Smith, one of the stars of 1961, is majestic in a black velvet fur-lined cape that belonged to her great- grandmother. "The season's still one of the best ways for people with a common heritage to meet," she says. Her young daughter disagrees. Smith says she was "rather thrilled" when the fruit of her well-bred loins was invited. "But my daughter just didn't want to do it."

I cast an eye over this year's offering. Flashy It Girl with (whisper it) new money does seem the order of the day, over and above sensible Sloane. Meanwhile, Smith's gaze alights on aforementioned near-naked young filly, a little purple round the gills but still pouting prettily, her coat a puddle on the ground. "In my day, we were taught how to take our coats off properly," this really rather splendid old lady says.

Copyright 2002 Independent Newspapers UK Limited
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