In Dallas: Mimi Makes Her Debut

By Sam Allis

No one breaks windows or swings from the chandeliers. There are no Lawrence of Arabia types to match the well-oiled revelers who made headlines among the sand dunes of Long Island after Fernanda Wetherill's legendary bash in 1963. Absent too is the spectacle of several years ago, when one Dallas daddy hired a three-ring circus, complete with elephants, for his daughter's party. "They're all playing it pretty conservative this year," explains Marge Waters, a close observer of the Dallas social scene.

Conservative is a relative term. "They wanted me to be a New York deb, but it was only for one night," Mimi Martin says, as she waits for her guests to arrive at the Brook Hollow Golf Club. Making her debut at a New York cotillion would have been fun but too fleeting. How is a girl supposed to come into society in just one night? In Dallas, when a girl comes out, she really comes out: two or three functions a day in her honor, six days a week, for three months. "You lose all track of the real world," says Gwen Kakaska, 22, who was anemic by the end of her season two years ago. "You live on nervous energy"

Debutante parties may have lost some of their luster along Philadelphia's Main Line and Boston's North Shore, but in Dallas they are still the measure of a woman with social ambitions. Someone's daddy could have made half a billion in the oil patch, but if the breeding isn't right, his baby won't be a Dallas deb. "You have no idea what a great honor it is to be a debutante in Dallas," says Mimi's grandmother, Florra Anderson. Mimi is one of only nine debutantes in Dallas this year. Traditionally, all of them have a relative who belonged to Idlewild, a select men's club composed of about 60 bachelors and a few hundred more inactive, married members. With fine discrimination and total secrecy, the men of Idlewild have been picking the debs since 1884.

Poised and pretty, Mimi looks just like a deb should look, even though she is 22, several years older than her counterparts in the East. She finishes a cigarette, slips into her long gloves, and braces for a session with the photographer. She is nervous. Her parents are nervous. "You could cut the tension in our house this afternoon with a knife," says her father, Alfred Deloach Martin Jr., who is in what Texans call R. and I.--ranching and investments. In a few minutes, 125 guests are scheduled to arrive for a dinner in Mimi's honor given by Gene Bishop, an old family friend and chairman of the Mercantile Texas Corp. Then, after dinner, another 1,200 people will descend on the club for the ball.

Mimi likes red. So Brook Hollow is red this night. Hundreds of red and white balloons. Huge sprays of red gladiolas. The tablecloths are red, as are the matchbook covers with MIMI emblazoned on them. So too are the rubies surrounded by diamonds in Mimi's necklace and earrings. Neiman-Marcus allowed Mimi the run of the jewelry department to borrow anything she wanted for her ball. "It was real special," she admits.

Dinner is a cozy affair, with crab souffle, lamb, two wines, crepes, champagne. Bishop tinkles his glass and affectionately tells everyone how Muni had set the world record in attending schools no one had ever heard of. Like many a deb before her, Mimi is not obsessed with academe. She favors tennis, jogging and "a lot of needlepoint." She spent a year at a school high enough in the Swiss Alps to ensure that everyone majored in skiing, and she also attended Alfred University in upstate New York, where she had heard that they had a great ceramics department. "I used to do a lot of pottery," she explains. For the moment, she's a full-time deb.

Mimi and her parents dash out of the dining room before the champagne is gone to get into the receiving line. Mal Fitch and his twelve-piece band, fixtures on the Dallas debutante scene, strike up some Glenn Miller. The guests snake out of the ballroom, through the foyer, to the front door, where fleets of limousines are still depositing the newly arrived. The men emerge crisp in white or black tie; the women are elegant in gowns of every description, occasionally worn under the pelt of some endangered species.

Mimi's ball is a slam dunk affair, with two bands, countless bars, and tables groaning under mountains of pate, strawberries and cheese. All this is matched by ample dollops of gossip and boredom. Was this bigger than last week's ball? What about the decorations? Where did that dress come from? What do you think this cost? And where in God's name did Mimi get those rubies? "I think they went through the telephone directory," complains one older gentleman, unhappy at the size of the ball. "I could invite anyone I wanted, and I did," a radiant Mimi says. "It's wonderful, beautiful." That is what her mother thinks too. "I'm having a ball at my ball," she booms again and again.

Coming-out parties are like weddings: parents seem to enjoy them as much as their children. "It's the one time of year when wives spend their husbands' money, and the men can't complain," Mr. Martin explains. And the bills are not inconsequential. Estimates vary wildly, but a first-class debutante ball starts at close to $50,000 and can run into hundreds of thousands. Some fathers take it better than others. Tom England, whose daughter Kyle, 22, made her debut a week before Mimi, has a secret survival tactic: "Drink a lot and nap a lot."

The decibel level rises as the evening goes on. Young stags huddle around the bars, looking steadily more glassy-eyed. Older couples float around the room in time-polished two-step, while the younger couples try to avoid each other's toes. But when Cole Porter gives way to rock 'n' roll, it is the older group that looks a tad silly dusting off their versions of the jitterbug, while the baby boomers twitch admirably to the new music.

The generation gap becomes unbridgeable when the White Animals start playing serious rock in another part of the club. The White Animals are Mimi's favorite band, and she had them flown in from Nashville for the occasion. She and her escort, Dayton Macatee, 23, are dancing up a storm. That Mimi and Dayton get along so well is no surprise; they're both well-bred, well-off young Texans. Keep in mind, though, that Mimi had nothing to do with the selection of Dayton as her escort. In feudal fashion, Idlewild made the match, based on criteria known only to the club. All the other couples were paired by Ann Draper, a professional social secretary. This matchmaking ritual began as a convenience decades ago and still seems to bring shining results. Says Kyle England: "I haven't had a bad date yet."

No one turns into a pumpkin at midnight. The guests are too busy devouring an early breakfast and gyrating to the White Animals. By state law, the booze has to stop flowing at 2. It does, and Fitch calls it a night. But the White Animals continue, and so do the revelers. At 4 a.m., the remaining stalwarts head off to various homes for a nightcap. For Mimi, it has been a "very quick fairy tale." She has even less time to savor it. At 11:30, there will be a luncheon in her honor.

--By Sam Allis

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