Carolina Herrera's Granddaughter Debuts at Le Bal in Paris: Olympia Báez Is 21, Studies at NYU, and Nobody Knows Yet Who Will Make Her Dress

Olympia Báez Herrera is 21, born in Madrid on 14 March 2005, and on 28 November she will make her debut at Le Bal, the famous debutante ball in Paris. She is the daughter of Carolina Adriana Herrera and the bullfighter Miguel Báez, known as "El Litri". Her maternal grandmother is the Venezuelan designer Carolina Herrera, and her paternal grandmother is Conchita Spínola.

Her parents married in June 2004 at the Los Guateles estate in Cáceres, in front of more than 600 guests. Their daughter, meanwhile, has so far chosen carefully when to appear in front of the cameras. She studies media, culture and communication at New York University (NYU) and lives in Nolita, Manhattan. She says she fell in love with New York through childhood visits to family and her mother's stories about the New York of the seventies: "Her love for this city eventually became mine too."

Her style doesn't hide where it comes from. In September, at the celebration of 45 years of the Carolina Herrera house in New York, she wore a long white ruffled skirt with black polka dots. Polka dots and two-tone combinations are her grandmother's recognisable signature. For shopping she picks small New York labels and vintage stores, from Dôen and La Ligne in the West Village to Tarin Thomas Vintage.

Last year her cousin Carolina Lansing, daughter of Patricia Cristina Lansing, also debuted at Le Bal. She wore a Wes Gordon creation for Carolina Herrera: black and white, polka-dotted, with a yellow bow embroidered at the hem, a small nod to the house's first perfume. That's why the question now is whether her grandmother's house will dress the granddaughter again, or whether Olympia will choose Parisian haute couture. There's no answer yet.

Debuting alongside her will be Angera Brachetti Peretti, daughter of Isabella Borromeo and Olympia's roommate in New York. The world of Le Bal is so small that your roommate from the student flat is also your partner at the ball.

The ball is sold as tradition, and it works like a club: you don't get in with a ticket, but with a surname. Is that tradition, or just the most elegant form of connections?