Party Like It's 1954

Sixty years ago tonight, Life magazine, as was its wont, went to a party.

As it happens, that party was the Baile de Carnaval, an annual highlight of the glittering winter social season in Havana.  Judging from the photos on offer, it seems to have been quite a wingding.  Sometime during the course of the evening, they ran across this fetching maiden, identified only as "debutante Maria Dolores Carrillo."

Beyond envying her the mantilla, one certainly can find much to pick over thoughtfully in this shot, not to mention in others of the same evening.

It's one of those circumstances in which the first thing that pops to mind is: "they have no idea."  No idea that before the decade is out, all this will be over.  One wonder what happened to the china and silver in this place, from the looks of it a club or perhaps a hotel ballroom, to the waiters' crisp linen jackets or to the pale fur stole thrown carelessly over the back of a chair, hardly a necessity on a frigid Cuban February night.

One wonders, for that matter, what happened to Srta. Maria Dolores.  From the look in her eyes - awfully arch for a debutante - I have a feeling she got by just fine.  I hope so.