The Rose Ball in aid of the Princess Grace Foundation

The Ball features a different theme and different decor every year, and some big names have helped to stage the event. From 1999 until his death in 2019, fashion designer and director of the fashion house Chanel Karl Lagerfeld organised this prestigious evening, devising incredible atmospheres within the Sporting de Monte-Carlo.

The ambiances created within the Salle des Etoiles have, in turn, evoked the Belle Epoque (2013), Russian Constructivism (2014), Art Deco style (2015), Cuba (2016), Viennese Romanticism (2017), the enormous urban scale of New York (2018) and the golden age of the French Riviera in the 1950s (2019). “Not a single ball (was held) without Karl, without his presence, his support, often his artistic direction and illustrations that he had drawn personally for the invitations,” the Société des Bains de Mer commented following the death of the great designer in 2019.

The Rose Ball is first and foremost a charity event. Funds raised through the raffle and other outstanding prizes (sculptures, paintings, etc.) have been donated in full to the Princess Grace Foundation since 1964. The Princess Grace Foundation is a charity which provides assistance to people in need and disadvantaged children. In particular, it has helped a number of paediatric units in French hospitals to purchase equipment that promotes the comfort of sick children.
The Foundation also supports work to distract children, for example by bringing in clowns to perform by their bedside.