Not Out Of Touch At All!

Don’t worry — the participants and organizers of this year’s International Debutante Ball are clued in to the pain each of us feels:

Champagne flowed. Men in tails waltzed and fox-trotted with debutantes in long white gowns to music by the 12-piece Lester Lanin Orchestra, a fixture at the ball almost since its inception in 1954. And shortly before midnight, the young debutantes, each flanked by a civilian and military escort, ascended the stage for a deep curtsy.

But the experienced hands, including mothers like the duchesse who made their own debuts in society in this very ballroom, could see the subtle difference in the layout of the hall. And there were fewer debutantes, 47 this year rather than the 58 at the last biennial ball in 2006, and far fewer guests — 662 instead of 976.

The director of the ball, Margaret Hedberg, brushed off the $14,000 cost of a table — “Watches cost more,” she said — although she acknowledged that perhaps the deepening recession accounted for the smaller crowd.

. . .

Looking back on past recessions, she said, “We got through ’87 and ’93, and life does have a way of going on.

“I don’t mean it in a flippant way, but romance and having fun and looking pretty — I hope that doesn’t go away.”

Except what happened in 1987 or 1993? I thought the earlier recessions happened in 1980-82 and 1990-91 . . .