In Hispanic traditions, a girl’s fifteenth birthday marks the end of childhood and the beginning of adulthood. Although the laws indicate that adulthood begins at 18 years (generally), 15 represents that first step to a greater burden of responsibilities and independence.
The party is an initiation ritual, and a very important and most representative element is the dress. Why a dress? It is simple: leaving behind the most innocent age of childhood, the young girl begins a period of greater sophistication, and this is symbolized in the dress.
But let’s go back a bit further. The Mayan and Aztec cultures performed puberty rites to indicate entry into adult life. At the age of 15, the young women attended the history and traditions school, then returned to the community and held a festival commemorating that initiation into adult life. When the Spanish settled in Mexico, they brought Catholic Masses, and later, during the French intervention, Carlota introduced dresses and the element of luxury.
As we can see, the dress is an element that represents adulthood and the introduction to society, and at present this symbolism is preserved and reproduced in each celebration of XV years that is carried out, naturally adding new elements that have importance in the contemporary culture, and abandoning others that are no longer relevant (such as the luxury represented by the Emperor Maximilian festivals).
Today the dress, in addition to what has already been noted, also symbolizes an achievement of the community, since it has been achieved that one of the youngest members has reached such a symbolic age, something that he could not do on his own but with the support of family and community.