Temporary exhibition at Kensington Palace
Opens 11 June 2008 until June 2009
Press preview: Tuesday 10 June 2008, 10.00-13.00
This summer visitors to Kensington Palace will be transported back to the last sumptuous, sophisticated and glamorous debutante season of 1958 in a new exhibition marking the 50th anniversary of the last presentations of debutantes to the Queen.
‘The last debutantes’ exhibition will draw visitors into the world of the debutante and the detailed preparations required for ‘coming out’ and The Season.
Visitors will experience the bewildering rules of etiquette and dizzying schedule of presentations, cocktail parties and dances against a backdrop of original items lent by former debutantes complemented by atmospheric audiovisual material.
The exhibition will feature accessories and stunning examples of couture dresses by Christian Dior, Pierre Balmain, Jacques Heim and Worth worn by the debutantes for evening engagements and their official court presentations at Buckingham Palace.
A former debutante from the famous Vacani School of Dancing will teach the art of the perfect curtsey.
Other debutantes and ‘debs delights’ will share personal reminiscences of The Season alongside non-debutantes who talk about their memories of being teenagers that year.
For a select group of aristocratic and upper class families ‘coming out’ had long been a rite of passage, marking the entry of their teenage daughters into fashionable society and the marriage market.
The London season began with the girls’, or debutantes’, formal presentation at court when, dressed in all their finery, they would file into Buckingham Palace and curtsey to the Queen.
The debutantes were celebrities across Britain as the newspapers and magazines at the time charted their every move.
The exhibition will capture the spirit of a world in transition in which the status of the upper classes became a subject of fierce debate. With the diminishing spectre of world war, independence in the colonies and cultural revolution around the corner, the debutantes’ days were numbered.
Against a mix of ceremony and indulgence, the exhibition sets the scene for change that would see social unrest, political activism and teenage culture make headlines in Britain during the summer of 1958: the year of the last debutantes.
