LE BAL DE LA ROSE
Late March · Salle des Étoiles, Monte-Carlo · An Evening · Since 1954
The Bal de la Rose is given at the end of March in the Salle des Étoiles at Monte-Carlo, and it opens the Monegasque year. Black tie, the Grimaldi family in attendance, and twenty-five thousand roses.
It is almost always credited to Princess Grace, and she had nothing to do with starting it.
The Three Decisions
The ball was created in 1954 by Henry Astric, artistic director of the Société des Bains de Mer, which is the company that has run Monte-Carlo’s rooms since the 1860s. Grace Kelly was in Hollywood at the time and did not marry Rainier until 1956.
Astric made three decisions that first year, and all three have survived seventy years.
The first was the dance. 1954 was the height of the Latin craze, with the mambo and the cha-cha everywhere, and Astric put the waltz at the centre of the evening. It was out of fashion, and he chose it for that reason. The guests took to it at once.
The second was the flowers. Only roses, and twenty-five thousand of them. No other bloom has been used since.
The third was the music. He hired a hundred violinists, which tells you most of what there is to know about the man.
The Foundation
Grace arrived two years after the first ball and changed what it was for. In 1964 she directed that everything the evening raised should go to the foundation that now carries her name, which works chiefly with children.
After her death in 1982 her daughter took the chairmanship, and the ball is presided over today by Prince Albert and Princess Caroline.
Since 1977 each edition has carried a theme, and since 1999 the theme has been a designer’s work. Karl Lagerfeld ran it for twenty years until his death, staging Cuba, Manhattan and London in the sixties inside one room on the Mediterranean. Christian Louboutin took it on afterward.
The set pieces are fixed. A member of the family dances first. There is a raffle, and it is taken seriously, because a good part of the money comes from it.
What to Know
It is by invitation and it fills, and the two facts are related. The list is drawn before anything is offered.
Black tie, and the room dresses to the theme within it. This is a couture audience and the dressing is the substance of the evening rather than an accessory to it.
The roof of the Salle des Étoiles opens. On a warm March night it is opened.
It is the first of the season rather than the last. The Red Cross Ball follows in the summer, and Monaco’s year runs between the two.
The Court
The Bal de la Rose is not the Court’s own, and places at it are given rather than sold. The Court seeks them where it can, and arranges the whole of the evening besides: getting there, where to stay, and the table afterward. Monaco in March also holds the opening of the Riviera season, and a member may take the week rather than the night.
