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.