Phone, wallet, keys, tiara? Forget warehouse raves or bottomless brunch — the only night out women my age want now is one on the Ton.
That’s not a typo. I meant Ton. I am 28 years old and (I concede, perhaps questionably) unashamed to say I spent a Saturday night two weeks ago, not in the pub, but accoutred in #regencycore garms, dancing ballroom routines to string versions of hit pop songs and trying to get an audience with a fictional queen.
Yes, it was of my own volition — nine of my best friends were there too (plus at least a thousand others). You may well ask what compelled a group of near-30-year-old women to engage in nothing short of cosplay. The plain-clothed commuters sharing our tube carriage home weren’t shy about asking.
It could only be Bridgerton: the Netflix show so many of us were driven to near-obsession over when it was released mid-lockdown last year and the second season of which was out on Friday. The Regency-era, romp-heavy drama is currently enjoying a run with Secret Cinema in London, the experiential event company that brings cult film and television programmes to life.
My friends and I clamoured to buy our £85 tickets. We had consumed the first series of Bridgerton in one greedy gulp in December 2020, enamoured by the storyline, costumes, casting, music and sex scenes. Its USP is the way it combines the 19th-century setting with modern touchstones. When it used an orchestral version of one of my favourite Taylor Swift songs to backtrack a steamy sequence between the protagonists, for example, my delight was such that I am considering walking down the aisle to it later this year. Don’t tell my fiancé.
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I rewatched the show recently and still find it compelling viewing. It really is such nice, unchallenging telly; nothing short of a tonic. So the opportunity to escape into that world for the night? Reader, we were frothing at the petticoat.
It wasn’t just us. Ahead of our debut to society, my Instagram was full of women I know dressed up for their turn around the room. It seems that everyone wants to be a Bridger-babe this spring. Depop reports that searches for opera gloves are up 85 per cent year on year; at eBay those for “Bridgerton outfit” have risen by 750 per cent. The aesthetic is known as #regencycore — and it is a decent shift from the jeans, nice tops and trainers we usually go out in.
The party costumes you see pictured here took more than a trip to Zara to source. Some of my friends had rented their poofy dresses; my bosom-boasting frock was borrowed from the Notting Hill-based, vintage-inspired brand Sister Jane. Opera gloves, pearls, fans, feathers and chokers had been bought online and I supplied the tiaras from the Times fashion cupboard.
A portion of the fun was in the preparation, which we did together while sipping champagne, tonging very tight ringlets and, of course, practising our pianoforte (read: posing for portraits by the piano). It was disappointingly an Uber, not a horse and carriage, that transported us to Wembley Park, the location Secret Cinema had directed us to in an email a few hours earlier.
Once there, costumed actors directed us to the actual venue — what appeared to be a giant warehouse. Inside, our phones were locked away. Then the real fun began. We drank coconut Palomas while working on our sketching. We learnt and performed ballroom dance routines in front of a queen, who sat on a throne above the dance floor, judging us.
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The music was provided by a string section, which played songs by Adele, Britney Spears and the like. We ran around trying to trade in made-up secrets and scandals, hoping to catch the attention of courtiers. At one point a friend and I were taken into a secret back room and initiated as associates of Lady Whistledown, the show’s no-longer-secret rag columnist. Our mission? To spread gossip.
All of this was interspersed by scenes (not the dirty ones!) from the show being played out live as the audience swooned and cheered. What surprised me most was the range of individuals in that audience: I met thirtysomething couples who were big fans of Bridgerton, fiftysomething groups who were just fans of Secret Cinema and vice versa. At the end of the night, when the queen chose her “diamond” (aka: the belle of the ball), the prize went to a man in his fifties who I was told has been to every single event Secret Cinema has staged. I won’t pretend that we didn’t feel overlooked.
It was the epitome of good clean fun: a few hours of unbridled, phone-free silliness without the usual punctuations of Instagram uploads and news alerts. And I know there will be some who bristle at grown women playing dress-up; at us millennials with our love of pricey experiences. But there’s something to be said for engaging in a bit of fantasy — even if, alas, our adult hangovers were very much a reality.
