ONE TRUMP AND YOU'RE IN
Victoria Mather investigates why 'the season' is not as it was. One of the reasons is that Ivana the Trump has replaced Amelia the debutante
THE SEASON, that swirl of parties between May and August, is in full swing, You cannot get a hotel room in London, despite their shocking prices, nor book a table in a restaurant you might like to eat in or be seen at. The mantelpieces are groan- ing with invitations to the young and the fun who are RSVP-positive. Royal Ascot was brimming, thousands are going to Wimble- don, and shortly the BMWs, Mercedes and Volvos of Chelsea and Fulham will be purring towards the polo or Henley Royal Regatta, with car boots full of pink food: salmon, lobster and strawberries — the English season's gastronomic insignia.
This resurgence of sybaritism, so grati- fyingly at odds with the prim self-image of the 'caring Nineties', has nothing whatever to do with debutantes, dowagers and dukes. There are debs, but they comprise an arcane social petting zoo gallantly kept going by Peter Townsend, the social con- sultant of Tatter. In the 19th century, even up until the first world war, well-bred girls emerged from the schoolroom and made their debut under the wing of an awe- somely respectable old bat (dowagerdom even descended inexorably upon their mothers in the mid-Thirties) in order to meet and marry an eligible fellow. If they
failed to 'take' in their first social season, the outlook was gloomy indeed on the home front, no one having much use for spinsters except as governesses.
It seems extraordinary now that the tradi- tional presentation at court continued into the Fifties and the reign of the present Queen. (Bentleys full of pretty girls wearing white plumes lining the Mall would be infinitely preferable to the charabancs of fat American tourists currently on offer.) Even in the Sixties there were debutantes coltish creatures tumbled out of finishing school with a shaky grip on domestic science and art history. In 1970, the story 'Debutante goes to university' was sufficient to excite the interest of the gossip column of the Daily Express; nowadays none of the girls purport- ing to be debs goes to Ascot because they are too busy doing A levels. The show has moved on without them and there is no more pertinent proof of John Major's class- less society than the new improved social scene, shameless in its commercial exploita- tion of money, vulgarity and long legs.
The season today is a vibrant creation of PR, sponsorship and sport. Once soci- ety danced at balls, now it goes to watch ball games: tennis, cricket, polo and, this year, football. All are opportunities for sponsors, for whom the pay-off is publici- ty, so the vapid presence of Miss Amelia Silly-Person, debutante, is superfluous to
the requirements of the guest list for the Cartier International Polo at the Guards Club on 28 July. Celebrities are now leading the season by the nose. Joan Collins, Ivana Trump, filly Cooper, Sophie Rhys-Jones, Sir Andrew Lloyd- Webber — these are the eminences at the ideal luncheon party. We have Tara Palmer-Tomkinson's 'Season Diary' in the Sunday Times in which she confides that she was too, too forgetful to apply for her badge for the Royal Enclosure at Ascot this year, so hung around White's tent with her lover, the restaurateur Mogens Tholstrup. Then her feet were absolutely killing her, so she didn't go out to dinner but stayed home with a video, a Chinese takeaway and that other society beauty, Normandy Keith.
This is the modern party girl: videos, takeaways, modelling contracts, a restaura- teur rather than a duke and sweet oblivi- ousness of the seismic rumbling of Lady Bracknell spinning in her grave. Miss Palmer-Tomkinson's season consists of modelling for De Beers (`They gave me the most beautiful necklace with a single solitaire diamond for doing the job'), for Ray-Ban, manufacturers of sunglasses, and for the Cartier Polo magazine. Her sched- ule is punctuated by charity balls and Sun- day afternoons at home in Hampshire watching the omnibus edition of EastEn- ders with her two labradors.
This artless whirl of pleasure is a paean to the consumerism which now drives the It's Gazza's, so I thougtht lots of tiers.'
season. The private parties may be fewer, but they are staggeringly lavish: witness Sir. James Goldsmith's birthday dinner fOi. John' Aspinall. Charity ball tickets are, on average, at.least £100 each for the privilege of feeling good about hav- ing a good time. Dinner parties are in decline because everyone eats in restau- rants (the opening of The Collection, Mr Tholstrup's new joint, had the entire cast of Hello! queuing in the street). Some 400 bottles of Krug Grande Cuvee were drunk when the Hon. Aurelia Cecil, doyenne of smart public relations, organ- ised a little drinks party for Remi and Olivier Krug at the Dorchester. The theme was '20,000 Bubbles Under the Sea', and semi-naked mime artists posed as mermaids. Honestly, you have to do something pointlessly extravagant these days to get anyone's attention. Or else summon Elizabeth Hurley. The Grosvenor House Art & Antiques Fair, an obligatory gesture towards seriousness in the social calendar, was probably unknown to millions until Miss Hurley graced its opening. On the old Richter scale of debu- tante fame, only Margaret Argyll in her heyday as Deb of the Year could have cre- ated one iota of the Hurley-burley. Forget a royal patron, the face of Estee Lauder is worth thousands of pounds of publicity to any event or charity. In fact, the royals, once linchpins of the season, have been swept aside in the mass rush towards celebrity. Even the Princess of Wales is less interesting than Jemima Khan.
Business entertaining has long been asso- ciated with somnolent bankers at the Royal Opera House, but the corporate opportuni- ties of the season are underpinning partygo- ing. 'Traditionally the most popular events are Wimbledon, Ascot, the British Grand Prix and the Derby, but this year Euro 96 exploded hospitality-wise,' says Stephen Marnham, chief executive of Sportsworld Hospitality. Tickets to the football, including lunch or dinner, ranged from £195 to £475. 'Wimbledon is a full day's entertainment with drinks, lunch and tea, and with deben- ture seats for the men's final costing £1,775, we are sold out,' says Mr Marnham.
Power networking at a slightly less obvi- ous level may be seen at the preview of the Chelsea Flower Show, the grandest garden party on earth, bulging with the great and the good from the Government Chief Whip Alastair Goodlad to the Tory Party chairman Brian Mawhinney, Sir Christo- pher Bland, Eddie George, Sir Colin Mar- shall and Sir Marmaduke Hussey. Not all could tell a dandelion from a dahlia, but the £170 tickets are already sold out for next year, by which time Tara Palmer- Tomkinson will probably have had a rose named after her.
Victoria Mather's book of social stereotypes, Absolutely Typical, with pictures by Sue Macartney-Snape, has just been published by Methuen,
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