PREPARING DEBUTANTES.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20922, 11 July 1931, Page 6 (Supplement)

PREPARING DEBUTANTES.

o THEN-AND NOW. A GREAT OCCASION. Of course, it was different in those days, though not so terribly different. Three years ago comparison would have been ludicrous, but as it is wo have ; jumped back through the years. : The modern debutante goes to Court almost as her mother did. She must walk in the same way, carry her long frock with the same air, and wear her train just as her mother did 30 years ago. All the same, when first I began to prepare debutantes for Court, it was a much more-serious business than it is to-day, ;\\ rites;; Londoner ■in a daily paper". ■ , Girls the'a regarded? presentation as an event —a great event. To-day, lam sorry to say, they seem to view it more ' in the light of an incident. I can well remember those first debutantes who came to me. and how terribly nervous they were. As girls they had been so restricted that they had not a modicum of social sense, poise or assurance. " Coming out" was their launching into a society of whose they were completely in ignorance. Pre-. ,Dentation was, as a. rule, the first step. Careful Rehearsing. . Iti their anxiety to be absolutely perfect they would rehearse again and again,. 1 insisting upon .so many lessons that the last few were completely superfluous, and resulted in their forgetting more than they had ever learned, x ; 4 One woman rushed in to me two days before the Court and clamoured for preparation. I advised her to have two lessons, one on each day, but this did not suit * her. She insisted on two lessons on the day itself, and the result was exactly as I anticipated. So sore and stiff was she from curtsey after curtsey that she limped a 'painful and unsteady way tothe thrones. „ Of course, in those days debutantes were infinitely more orthodox than they are to-day. , Court dress was more or less recognised as standard.. • The train was worn pendant shoulders, the feathers were high on;the head, and to depart from this order of things was definitely not done." ' 1 ' To-day girls strive after originality, and th;s, in an' affair like presentation, is a pity. Trains are worn sometimes from the waist and at others suspended from the shoulder on the one side and from a half-way point on the other. Both these are incorrect, and the train should be hung evenly, from both shoulders. Feathers, too, have tended to be worn in a jaunty, " go-as-I-please " style, whereas there.are only two correct methods—namely, at the back of the head or slightly tilted to the left 'side. Debutantes, of course, frequently make mistakes.- Some of these are very amusing? I have in mind one instance. The girl was the daughter of an official, and had been accustomed to presenting bouquets to visiting nobilities. , When the time came for 'her to make her curtsey all her carefully-taught instructions left her head, and, making an awkward step forward, she hold out her bouquet to Their Majesties.- ' ' ' A Succession of Curtseys. - There is humour and there is pathos in-being presented. In Queen Victoria's time the unfortunate debutante had to make her curtsey to each member of the Royal Family in order of rank, and from each she retreated backward. The ordeal in *such a case was terrible, and it is good that these old formulas have been abandoned. To-day there are two curtseys only to make, and there is none of that awkward backward walking. j I have often despaired, however, of teaching certain girls the correct way of leaving the Royal presence. Some cringe backward in .exaggerated humility, while others stump rapidly away as though delighted to get the affair over. The walk should be one in which the debutante always faces Their Majesties, moving in front of them by gracefully crossing one foot before the # 6ther. I should like just to say to all debutanes: "Treat presentation as a great occasion> as your mothers did. Awkwardness, is there only in your imagination, and the ordeal, if any, is just as much that of. Their Majesties as it is of yours." Self-assurance should not worry the modern debutante —she is too free a person for that. It was 'only in those old days that one expected a girl to be nervous, for, as well, as appearing before her King and Queen, she was making her first entry into society..