THIS YEAR’S ROYAL COURTS

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 83, Issue 40, 17 February 1939, Page 2

THIS YEAR’S ROYAL COURTS

RECORD NUMBER OF DEBUTANTES 4000 TO BE PRESENTED Papers by air mail bring the news that five Courts and a presentation party will be held at Buckingham Palace this year. It was the official announcement from the Lord Chamberlain’s Office. This news will set in motion the smooth-running wheels of scores of dress houses—the beauty salons—the deportment schools. It is the great grooming process of the year. Four thousand women will have to learn to curtsy—to dip gracefully, with back straight and head erect, balancing a book to keep it steady. Plump young girls from the country will come to London’s beauty specialists to slim”. In the morning it will be massage, exercises, face treatment. A special diet sheet will be worked out for them. This year is likely to create a record in lovely debutantes. That will mean a bigger spate of parties. Small informal lunches in exclusive restaurants—heads turning—who is that? One of the lucky young women will become famous as “the prettiest deb.” of 1939. She will be photographed at race-meetings, hunt-balls and cocktail parties. Cosmetic manufacturers will clamour for her custom—it will double their sales. Four thousand women will be allowed to enter the sacred precincts of the Royal Enclosure at Ascot. They will have reached the apex of the social scale. But the Courts mean more than mere events of the season. That simple announcement from the Lord Chamberlain’S Office is a tonic worth scores of thousands of pounds to the industries of Britain. Think of the items under entertaining. Three private dances a night—that is the average for the coming

weeks till the First Court in March. It means scores of dinner-parties—-the caterers will work overtime. More servants will be employed—even the Post Office gets its pull out of invitations and telephone calls. Then there are the dressmakers. Four thousand Court gowns, and add to that 40.000 new ensembles to cope with the incessant round of various functions. That is putting it at a minimum—ten dresses per personmost have 20. It means trade for our fabric manufacturers furiers and jewellers. Something for South African ostriches to live for. You can go on for ever tracking the repercussions on British industries. I have just thought of shoes—my arithmetic won’t stand up to the strain of working out just how many pairs will be sold—but, as the English foot is a law unto itself, you can be sure 75 per cent, of the 4000 will buy British. Already the dressmakers’ workrooms are packed with gown-hands—-additional staff employed to embroider elaborate Court trains. One Court gown can keep four girls busy for three weeks—then it is sold for 150 guineas. But that is not an average price. There will be debutantes whose parents are squeezing every penny so that it may buy a background for their daughter's social life. Those girls will be fitted by the little-dressmaker-around-the - corner. It will probably cost them ten guineas and the dressmaker will add “Court.”