High society

An elegy on the end of elegance

Gstaad During these dark, endless periods of lockdown, let’s take a trip down memory lane to a time when we still had real high life: parties galore, carefree girls in their summer dresses, and drunken dawns playing polo in dinner jackets. Life forms began to move properly about 500 million years ago, but I will take you back only 50 or so years, when chic creatures moved to the beat of the samba, the tango, the waltz and the cha-cha-cha. The Roaring Twenties roared because of the Great War’s privations, and the fabled, fabulous Fifties were a reaction to the second world war. People ached to have a good time