Bright Young Things Schoolboy Party

Found- an American press photograph from 1932. On the back is typed “Schoolboy Party Society Stunt. The latest fad of society in London is the schoolboy party, one of which took place at the Punch Club. The invitations were entrance forms to ‘St Barnacle’s School’ and many prominent society members attended dressed in appropriate costumes. Above are some of the guests in ‘uniform’. In centre is Lady Ashley (without hat) and third from left is Elsie Randolph.. Acme Press 7/25/32.” 
 This is the world of Evelyn Waugh’s 1930 novel Vile Bodies. The  hero of the novel, Adam, becomes a society columnist – ‘Oh Nina, what a lot of parties’ he complains to his girlfriend – and the narrator adds:

“…Masked parties, Savage parties, Victorian parties, Greek parties, Wild West parties, Russian parties, Circus parties, parties where one had to dress as somebody else, almost naked parties in St John’s wood, parties in flats and studios and houses and ships and hotels and night clubs, in windmills and swimming-baths, tea parties at school where one ate muffins and meringues and tinned crab, parties at Oxford where one drank brown sherry and smoked Turkish cigarettes, dull dances in London and comic dances in Scotland and disgusting dances in Paris – all that succession and repetition of massed humanity … Those vile bodies…”