BAL DES DÉBUTANTES

Bal des Débutantes, known in Paris simply as le Bal, is an evening on a Saturday at the end of November at the Shangri-La Paris, in the salons of Prince Roland Bonaparte facing the Eiffel Tower: about twenty young women are presented, each in haute couture lent by a fashion house and on the arm of a cavalier, and then there is dinner and a ball, in aid of charity. Ophélie Renouard revived it in 1992 and runs it still.

No place at it can be bought, whether to take part or to watch.

The Crillon

The old Paris ball was first held in the Orangery of the Château de Versailles on 10 July 1958, when fifty American debutantes were presented. It was not held in 1968, and the series was then given up.

Ophélie Renouard revived it in 1992, while she was working at the Hôtel de Crillon, as an event of fashion: on 27 September of that year it was a showing of couture. In 1994 it became a ball for the first time, with cavaliers. It was held at the Crillon every year from 1992 to 2012, and for those years was known as the Crillon Ball.

Since 2018 it has been given at the Shangri-La, in the salons that were once the house of Prince Roland Bonaparte. The editions of 2020 and 2021 were put off because of the pandemic.

It has raised money for charity from the first. From 2009 to 2019 it supported Enfants d’Asie; in 2022, ARCFA and World Central Kitchen. The families of those presented give to the charities.

The Evening

The ball is on a Saturday, and the day before belongs to the preparations: hair and make-up from nine in the morning, the photographs, and a waltz class for the fathers and the cavaliers.

On the night the young women are introduced one by one, in alphabetical order, each on her cavalier’s arm, by Stéphane Bern. Dinner follows. Then the ball is opened, and the fathers dance with their daughters.

The gowns are haute couture, lent by the houses, and every young woman wears jewellery from the same jeweller. A cavalier is chosen by the young woman herself or found for her by the organiser.

In 2025, the thirty-first edition, held on 29 November, nineteen were presented before two hundred and eighty guests, with Stéphane Bern as master of ceremonies and jewellery lent by VMuse, in aid of ARCFA and the Maria Fareri Children’s Hospital. The date of the 2026 ball has not been published.

What to Know

It falls on the last Saturday of November: 30 November in 2024, 29 November in 2025. The dates for 2026 and 2027 have not been announced.

There are no tickets. One attends only at the invitation of the organiser.

Black tie. Nothing is published that the Court has seen; in 2025 the gentlemen wore dinner jackets.

The Shangri-La Paris is itself a hotel, and the ball is held in its salons.

The mistake is to assume that a place can be bought. It cannot, either to dance or to watch; it comes by invitation alone.

The Court

Bal des Débutantes is not the Court’s own, and the Court will not pretend it can buy a member a place. The Court goes only where a member is invited by the organiser, as a guest and a supporter of the charities the evening serves; the presentation is the families’ affair, not the Court’s. For a member who is invited, the Court arranges the whole of it: getting there, where to stay in Paris, and the table afterward.

How one becomes a member is set out under Admission.