It has been trumpeted as the grandest “coming-out” ball on Earth. A multilingual group of 23 teenage girls, selected for their looks, charm, and famous parents – or, failing that, unpronounceable surnames – checked into the gilded Hotel de Crillon in Paris late last week for Saturday’s big dance.

Trading fashionably frayed jeans and fruity lip gloss for tiaras and haute couture gowns worth up to $55,000 each, they underwent a semi-Cinderella transformation (“semi” because these girls had a head start on Cinderella). After a photo shoot and fashion show, they paired off with eligible young escorts and waltzed around before an audience of proud parents and polite press.

This year’s crop of so-called new debs came from 13 countries and included Anastasia Gorbacheva, granddaughter of Mikhail Gorbachev; Astrid de Weddingen, descendant of Count Dracula; Alexandra Mentzelopoulos, whose family own Chateau Margaux; Bea Shaffer, daughter of Vogue editor Anna Wintour; and Petra Ecclestone, daughter of Formula 1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone and his wife, Slavica.

That this bizarre fairy-tale rite survives is thanks to the gentle persistence of its fairy godmother, Ophelie Renouard, a worldly French woman who lives in Paris and London. But even she seems baffled by the ball’s success.

“I cannot understand it,” she says. “Perhaps it is the model thing. The girls come from very privileged backgrounds, yet none of them has ever been to a haute couture house. We treat them like models – we try to find the best dresses, hairdressers, and make-up artistes. We want them to look beautiful. They love it.”

Ms. Renouard tries to skirt the word “debutante,” as it “gives the wrong impression” to girls contemptuous of “coming out” in the traditional way, as their grandmothers did. Instead, Ms. Renouard calls them “new debs.”

“It has nothing to do with the old understanding of ‘debutante,’ the social thing, which has no meaning to the French,” she says. “It is totally different. The title of the event is the Paris Haute Couture Ball or New Debs Ball. And I am the inventor of it.”

Ms. Renouard scours the society pages and plies contacts on every continent for new girls on the cusp of late teen hood, applying genealogical acuity combined with a dash of private detective. She writes to the parents, suggesting that it might be fun if their daughters took part – nothing flashy, except a few cameras, and no mention of prospective husbands. Then follow months of discussions, fittings, and photo shoots that capture the passage of each new deb, before the final accouchement in Paris.

“The main criterion for a girl is that she can squeeze into a sample couture ball gown,” says Ms. Renouard. “The girls must also come from families of renown and have nice personalities. There is an attitude that we like. The girls stay three-to-a-room in the Crillon. If they say they don’t want to, we say ‘Non.'”

Besides couture gowns getting ripped, much of the drama of the ball – the tantrums and the egos – takes place behind the scenes. Ms. Renouard’s biggest headache is the occasional pushy parent, bulldozing her (it is usually a her) way backstage, influencing the choice of dress, interfering with fashion shoots, tinkering with the seating arrangements, and fussing when the press ignores her daughter. Ms. Renouard’s time studying psychology at the Sorbonne wasn’t wasted. She can spot such parents a mile off. Telltale signs include label snobbery and a tendency to finish off their daughters’ sentences.

“Most of the parents are amused, proud, and mesmerized by the transformation of their daughters,” says Ms. Renouard. “But because the majority of them are so-called important people, we have a few parents on the outside who are, you might say, less important, who feel insecure and try to break in. In the end, they fail.” This year, 23 girls are taking part instead of the usual 24 because Ms. Renouard had to drop one of the girls after a difference of opinion with her father.

Each girl wears a dress by a different designer, the most coveted being Chanel, Lacroix, and Dior. In 2000, a fight broke out when Lady Isabella Hervey was refused Dior in favor of Lauren Bush, President Bush’s niece. Lady Isabella’s mother, the Marchioness of Bristol, a long-standing Dior client, had other ideas. Calm was restored when Lady Isabella was offered John Galliano, who was, and still is, head designer at Dior. “Now the marchioness and I are best friends,” says Ms. Renouard with a diplomatic smile.

At least Ms. Wintour, whose daughter Bea wore Chanel, knows about fashion. “I have never met anyone like her,” says Ms. Renouard. “She won’t take ‘No’ for an answer. I just say ‘Yes’ to everything. She is controlling the press for her daughter. She knows better than me how to do it, so I just leave it to her. My concern is for the girls to have fun.”

The ball began one Sunday afternoon in 1991, loosely modeled on the Berkeley Dress Show, the last vestige of the debutante tradition in England where young ladies were presented at court before being launched into high society. “There was a fashion show and a cocktail party,” says Renouard. “It was low-key except for the gowns. But the girls were very good, all French except Alison Grade, daughter of Michael Grade. The French fathers couldn’t take their eyes off Alison’s mother.”

Ever since Mikimoto, the pearl company, became sponsors in 1996, the event has flourished, with research into Aids and cancer benefiting from the evening. When Miss Bush stole the show in 2000, and went on to a modeling career, the ball became known around the world. “That was the first time we had someone with a world-famous name,” says Ms. Renouard. This triggered a trend. In 2001, Xenia Gorbacheva, Mikhail’s granddaughter, took part, followed by Barbara Berlusconi, Silvio’s daughter, in 2002.

“I am still surprised that the Bushes, Berlusconis, and Gorbachevs took part,” says Ms. Renouard. “I simply wrote to them asking if they’d like their daughters to come to the ball. They said, ‘Yes.'”

Ball fever is spreading east. Last year, three Chinese girls were at the Crillon, including Bao Bao Wan, granddaughter of Wan Li, former chairman of the Chinese National People’s Congress and executive vice-premier of China, and Penelope Pei-Tang, niece of the architect IM Pei. “I feel very much at home with the Chinese,” says Saigon-born Ms. Renouard. “They are very abrupt, like the French.”

Meanwhile, parents thrust their daughters forward from Japan, Mexico, Guatemala, Brazil, and Egypt, as well as every country in Europe. Only Hollywood has so far eluded Ms. Renouard.

“Too spoilt,” she says, briskly. “We would like showbiz, but nice, educated showbiz. We asked one of the Hollywood people, but he demanded five first-class tickets and five rooms at the Crillon. He could afford them himself. If I had to pay for a trip, I’d rather pay for someone who cannot afford it.”