PEARL BALL

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 233, 20 February 1913, Page 3

PEARL BALL

J HOSTESS' £1013,000 COLLECTION. A ball that will go down in social history as the "Pearl ball," because of the unrivalled display of pearls by the dancers, was given at Washington on January 2 by Mrs. William 11. Draper, widow of a former United States Ambassador in Italy. Officially it was described as an eighteenth century ball, and the 300 guests were all dressed in eighteenthcentury French Court costumes. ■ The'hostess wore pearls representing an outlay of £IOO,OOO. Her hair was done in the Louis XV. style and was crowned with a tiara of magnificent pear- | shaped pearls. Her earrings were pearls, and she also wore a collar of pearls and a four-stranded necklace with a long strand of pearls reaching from the shoulders nearly to the floor.' Pearls formed her corsage, and an ornament, stomacherfashioned, of pearls covered her waist and hips. In the dress of a lady of the Court of Louis XV. the hostess presented a dazzling appearance. Her daughter, a slender girl, who is heiress to a fortune estimated/at £6,000,000, wore a pink and blue costume with cascades of lace and a famous string erf pearls collected by her father i'h the four quarters of the globe, including a remarkably fine specimen presented to her by Queen Mar- - gueritd of- Italy. The display of the hostess and her daughter was rivalled by those of Mrs. Joseph Leiter and Mrs. Peter Goelet Gerry, who are reputed to have searched the world in a quest for pearls; while the pearls worn by many other women were only less remarkable.

A minuet was danced in a grand salon festooned and garlanded with Christmas wreaths and ropes of scarlet satin. Before the ball the guests were entertained at a dinner given by Mrs. Richard Reid Pvon-ers, who, as a compliment to Miss Da-aper, transformed the house into an eighteenth century French garden. Even the costumed servants were in the fashion of the period.