Egad, the gadabouts have been at it again-expanding their social horizons. . . . Viewers experienced that “Isn’t it a small world?” feeling at the Links Inc.’s “Collectors’ Extravaganza” exhibit on the South Side. For that dressy display, Mrs. I. Roberta Bell, a teacher and member of the Links’ 5-year-old Chicago chapter, loaned her bevy of eye-catching dolls garbed in costumes of many nations-hoping her miniature ambassadors would inspire greater understanding of all cultures. . . . Lifesizing that wish, a Japanese kimono, an Indian sari and more than one Paris ball gown glided gracefully across the Hilton’s Grand ballroom at this year’s Consular Ball. Wearing those fashions were wives of consuls and consuls general in the corps representing more than 40 countries in Chicago. At the white-tie soiree sponsored by the Library of International Relations, Gov. and Mrs. William G. Stratton and the Byron Harveys joined other local luminaries in saluting the city’s resident diplomats. . . . There’s something Old World about a cotillion, but the annual white-tie debut dinner-dance introducing daughters of Chicago’s elite families to adult society boasts a contemporary purpose-fundraising for Passavant Hospital by its high-echelon woman’s board. Each of this year’s 30 Passavant Cotillion debutantes strode into the Conrad Hilton ballroom on the arm of her father or another male escort. It’s all ved-dy formal, but even the cotillion tolerates the occasional tee-hee. One deb’s dad instructed a compadre to “remember to stay eight feet apart”-the space required between dad-daughter pairs in procession-by recalling the typical length of his golf putts. And the debs, during one of several dance figures, waved pink masks with silver-sequin eyelashes at their adoring audience. Too divine.
