THE VERNAL BALL

The Vernal Ball is the Court’s evening at the turn of the season, at the end of April, when the lawns come back and the year goes outdoors.

Eighty places. A colour is called in the invitation, and the room keeps to it.

The Form

In June 1910, weeks after Edward VII died, the Royal Enclosure at Ascot kept to black from end to end. Half a century later Cecil Beaton dressed the Ascot scene of My Fair Lady after it, in black and white. Two years after that, Truman Capote took the idea from the film.

In November 1966 he asked five hundred and forty people to the Plaza and told them to come in black or in white, masked. Nobody remembers the food. Everyone who has seen the photographs remembers the room: one room, two colours, and every face in it standing out against them.

A colour called does what a dress code cannot. A dress code tells a room how formal to be. A colour tells it how to look together, and turns eighty separate decisions into a single picture.

The Court calls a colour of spring, a different one each year, and keeps its own flowers, linen and light to it.

The Evening

Eighty places. Only the Charity Gala Dinner in November gathers more, and a ball needs the number: fewer and the floor looks empty, more and nobody can be found.

Dinner first, at round tables, and then the dancing, to an orchestra, until late.

It opens the Court’s warm half of the year. The croquet and the lawn party follow in May, and the summer after them.

What Is Asked

Black tie, carrying the year’s colour. How it is carried is the member’s affair: a tie, a pocket square, a sash, a gown. Head to foot is not required, and is rarely wise.

The Court sits down at eight whether or not everyone is there.

Telephones stay in pockets. A photographer attends, and what is worth keeping is sent afterward.

Nobody is pitched at the table.

The Places

Eighty. The list closes a month ahead.

Members are written to in February, when the colour is named.

A member may bring a guest by arrangement, and answers for them. Guests carry the colour too.

The sum is stated in the invitation and covers the whole of the evening.

How one becomes a member is set out under Admission.