TIMES CHANGE

Evening Post, Issue 51, 2 March 1931, Page 13

TIMES CHANGE

BEING, A DEBUTANTE

Bofore tho slump, private entertainment was tho order of the day and parents were justified in confining their debutante daughters to social activities, writes an Englishwoman. Now people <ctus no longer afford to give dances

and so tho debutante who formerly was brought up to be rather dowdy and worthy and to rely on her family rather than her appearance for her social success has been allowed to trim her sails accordingly. Instead of being homely, sho is allowed and even encouraged to be sleek and well turned out, so that she will be invited to restaurants and hotels and dance clubs by sophisticated young men. This is all to the good. No one was moro unhappy than the debutante, dressed in white and looking self-con-scious-rexcept perhaps the young man who was dancing or sitting out with her. A debutante who looked • smart two years ago was viewed with no littlo suspicion. To-day, if she is to bo invited out, which usually moans to dine in a private house and t° dance •afterwards in a public restaurant, she has got to be smart. Young men are as self-conscious about their partners' appearance as they aro about themselves. More so, probably. There are one or two girls still who are allowed nowhere without their chaperones. A chapcrone is out of placo in a dance club, and with the scarcity of Drivate dances, where she can sit at the side of the ballroom and then go down and have a large supper at midnight, she is—despite the revival of things Victorian —neither useful nor ornamental. . '• ■