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PREST: Dîner en Blanc induces white pants panic

Guests at annual fashion feast seen having tons of fun and lugging heavy objects
diner en blanc
Revellers toast the night at Dîner en Blanc Aug. 23 at VanDusen Botanical Garden. photo Jonathan Evans

Did you always want to know all the secrets of Dîner en Blanc, the annual whiteout picnic that inspires equal parts delight, rage, and Instagram posts?

I didn’t. That’s why it was a bit of a surprise when the invitation arrived in my inbox. Would I be so kind as to please attend the seventh anniversary edition of Le Dîner en Blanc Vancouver, billed on the invitation as “THE August al fresco event of the year!”

Me? Are you sure? Am I being Punk’d?

It was no joke. Somehow The Social Concierge, the hosts of the Vancouver event, had realized what a high-society, trend-setting Instagram influencer I was. My 98 followers would be so thrilled/jealous!

One question remained for me: what is Dîner en Blanc? It sounded cool, and I recalled seeing the odd photo from past years, but I only had a vague notion of what the whole affair was really about.

Maybe Twitter would have the answer. Oh look, here’s a highly regarded magazine based in Vancouver running an article entitled “Dîner en Blanc is Deeply Uncool.” Oh?

And here’s a fellow journalist I respect very much calling it an “annual Instagram preening event.” And I don’t think I can reprint some of the things this other gentleman was saying about it, in part because I’m not exactly sure what a “douche-
canoe” is.

Let me take a closer look at that invitation. You pay about fifty bucks to go to this thing, although they call it “exclusive” and invites can be hard to come by. So you must get some good food for this  Dîner, right?

Nope, you bring your own food.

Oh, but the fancy table settings are all ready for you, right?

Nope, you bring all your own linens and cutlery.

Well fine, you bring your picnic basket, sit down at the tables set out for you and lay out your wonderful spread, right?

Nope, you have to bring your own table and chairs. Wait, what? Bring your own table?! What exactly are you paying $52 for?! Do you at least get to go for a ride in the douchecanoe?

Luckily for me, my invitation was for a media viewing of the event, not the dinner itself, which meant that I didn’t have to haul my own table and I would be provided with wonderful food and drink by the organizers. Sounded like a better deal to me.

The troublesome part, however, came in the rules section of the invite. Everyone – including schlubby members of the media, who often get congratulated any time they can go through a meal without adding a new mustard stain – needed to follow the strict dress code: “elegant and white only. ... This means no ivory, no off-white, and no beige.”

A day before the event I went out and bought the most elegant white polo shirt offered at Mark’s Work Warehouse. I then tried it on with my trusty old pair of white pants. Uh oh. The pants are not white. I don’t know what colour they are exactly except that they are not the same colour as my elegant new shirt. They’re merely white-ish.

It’s at this point that my wife fired up an old episode of Gilmour Girls where Rory is swept away to a bizarrely formal secret high-society party hosted by Logan and all his smarmy trust-fund buddies. Humble and sensible Rory is instructed to join in and have fun, but not do anything to “interfere with the integrity of the event.”

Oh crap, I think. That’s me, isn’t it. I’m about to interfere with the integrity of the August al fresco event of the year! What kind of monster have I become?

So I may or may not have spent the next two days visiting nearly every clothing shop on the North Shore. Apparently we are not white pants people.

At the last minute my wife arrived looking stunning in her $20 white dress and bearing a gift for me. White pants! Super skinny white pants! With ... holes in them! Lots of holes! 

Now, I am a father of two children who has a sedentary job, wears $10 sunglasses, and spends half of my waking hours tinkering with my fantasy baseball teams. Yes, plural. I should not be wearing skinny pants with holes in them. 

No time to argue though! Or warn any nearby children! On to Dîner!

We arrived to a very odd scene of thousands of people streaming through a residential neighbourhood towards VanDusen Botanical Garden (the secret location!). It was weird, but fun. Everyone was happy.

We got onto the grounds, and there was no pants shaming. There was no colour bouncer there bloodying the noses of the few who dared to show up sporting a cream cravat or an off-white shawl. 

And once you’re in there you start to see where some of that money goes. The setup was really stunning, VanDusen was its normal breathtaking self, and musicians, dancers, and two Scottish blokes named Colin and Justin – my wife was very excited to see them – were mixing and mingling with the crowd.

And I gotta say, for all the naysayers – there were 4,000 people there, and everyone was having a lot of fun. In fact, it seemed near impossible not to have fun there.

I recently listened to a podcast about the science of “fun.” Being social, doing things as a group is scientifically proven to be fun. And that’s what I saw at Dîner en Blanc – people making it a big blowout, connecting with friends and having themselves a time.

Could you do this in your own backyard without charging 50 bucks a head? Yes. Yes you could. And you should! But this was fun too. Lots of fun. And I wouldn’t begrudge anyone joining the fun. People pay a lot more to see Vancouverites lazing about at most any Canucks game.

But you know what else the fun scientist taught me? That helping others also can be fun. Lots of fun. 

And that’s my one suggestion for Dîner en Blanc. Make this a charity event! Their website, which does seem to be by far the most pretentious thing about the event, goes so far as to defiantly and explicitly explain that the dinner is just a “magical evening” and under no circumstances will any funds be donated to humanitarian or social causes. Right.

It really was a pretty magical evening. But they’re also charging fifty dollars for a piece of magic grass, so why can’t they throw five bucks per head to a hot lunch program? Or maybe they could help some down-on-their-luck folks get some fancy white clothes of their own so they can look sharp for job interviews? C’mon, no one should have to show up for an important event with holes in their pants.

Andy Prest is the sports editor for the North Shore News and writes a biweekly humour/lifestyle column. He can be reached via email at aprest@nsnews.com.