Ballgown Gallery

The 1958 Season - Dresses for Dancing into the Dawn

Two suggestions for dance dresses for debutantes for the 1958 Season, the last year in which debs were presented to the Queen at Buckingham Palace. On the left, for summer dances, so many of which are now held in country houses a short dance dress by Jacque Heim of fine French cotton printed with blue roses. On the right, for Queen Charlotte's Ball, one of the highlights of the Season, a traditional white ballgown, romantic, full-skirted and sweeping to the ground. The gown, made of white lace with a fichu and insertions of pale pink organza is by Fontana of Rome. Pictures photographed at 21 Ilchester Place, the home of Mr and Mrs Rolf Thoresen.
1958

© Illustrated London News Ltd/Mary Evans

Miss Barbara McNeill in her coming-out dance frock, 1939

Miss Barbara McNeill, daughter of the late Captain Ronald McNeill and Mrs J. A. Dewar, pictured wearing a full-skirted, crinoline style white satin frock with red sash which she wore for her coming-out dance at her mother's house in East Grinstead. She married Michael Langhorne Astor in 1942 with whom she had four children, and secondly, Conservative politician, George Reginald Ward, 1st Viscount Ward of Witley. Date: 1939

© Yevonde Portrait Archive/ILN/Mary Evans Picture Library