Jane Fonda and Richard Lugner at the Vienna Opera Ball, Hollywood and Austria, new world meets old world, the story was already a blast. Precisely because the 85-year-old fitness icon had promised the 90-year-old contractor primarily because of the princely payment. “Well, I was offered a lot of money and I need the money,” she said at a press conference in the Lugner City shopping center, which belongs to the Lugner empire.
Then the story took an even better turn, which from now on actually belongs in every handbook for USA tourists in Europe: Jane Fonda didn’t even know that the opera ball was going to happen, she had only prepared for the opera – mentally and fashionably . The fitness icon had packed a pair of pants.
A tie obligation, “No Brown in Town”, a responsible use of jeans and sneakers, these are all rules that no longer exist in many parts of the world today. Not so in Austria, or at least in the First House on the Ring in Vienna on the last Thursday before Ash Wednesday. So Fonda had what is also known in the United States as a fashion emergency for the opera ball – an invitation (for which she also got money) and no dress. Someone must have sent her one at the last minute because Jane Fonda turned up in a dress Thursday night after all.
Who did the dress come from?
The only question is: who did it come from? It can hardly be someone who is familiar with local style conventions. The dress is white, the color that only debutantes are allowed to wear on this occasion. The dress is also a few centimeters too short, because the hems of the ladies are supposed to cover the ankles. Jane Fonda didn’t know anything about the evening of the opera ball either. When asked on red carpets – or in this case in the foyer – where the dress came from, which was actually quite predictable, she answered: “I don’t know.”
Jane Fonda, it is clear, really had little interest in opera and made no secret of admitting it. Her stylist Cristina Ehrlich clarified the matter on Friday via Instagram. And it fits that someone who was socialized far away from this old opera ball world stepped in at the last minute. Emilia Wickstead originally comes from New Zealand and makes evening dresses from London that are so beautiful that they actually belong on every stage – just maybe not on this one in Vienna. Ehrlich’s comment on the picture of Fonda and Lugner in the State Opera on Instagram rounds off this story about American-Austrian relations as follows: “#janefonda attends the annual Vienna Opera Ball in Venice.”