Couture and le Bal

“You feel unique and special,” says a former deb. “The fit, the coloring, the shape – all are individually customized just for you.”

Although many of the girls who participate in « le Bal « arrive already acquainted with Paris, fine jewelry, and French cuisine, the Bal for each debutante serves as an initiation into the mysteries of haute couture. No other deb party anywhere in the world confers on young women the privilege of wearing original, made-to-measure, handfinished designs by France’s finest and most storied fashion houses. This Cinderella-like rite of passage lends to le Bal much of its transformative, fairy-tale aura. A high-school or college student’s jeans or ready-to-wear dress is replaced, for one magical night, by a flawless ballgown constructed and embellished by the little hands of the grandest dressmaking estabishments in the world. “ You feel unique and special ” says a former deb. “ The fit, the coloring, the shape – all are individually customized just for you”. An haute couture dress symbolizes for the deb not only an elegant entrance into adulthood, it also denotes an entire way of life, dating back to the time of Louis XIV, whose finance minister Jean-Baptiste Colbert established France in the 1660s as the leading manufacturer of silks and other luxury items.

The rigorously trained technicians who fabricate each deb’s dream dress exist in Paris alone, which is why an haute couturier can come from any country on the planet, but must practice his craft in Paris. “ Before le Bal, I never realized how much artistry and culture there can be in a single dress” a past deb recalls. The tradition of haute couture, renewed every season and every generation, represents nothing less than civilization itself.