Five years ago, when Heather Fontana attended her high school prom, her date was her best friend, a guy she’d known for years — not exactly a Cinderella story.
This outing would be different, the 23-year-old told herself as she gazed in a mirror. She glanced at the curlers in her hair that were almost ready to unspool. She carefully curled her eyelashes, accentuating her brown eyes, as her boyfriend, Ramon Perez, looked on. Her dress and gloves were laid out on the bed; a hoop skirt was nearby.“This,” she said, “is what I wish prom was like.”
Fontana was prepping for “The Queen’s Ball: A Bridgerton Experience” in San Francisco, a ticketed party where guests are encouraged to don formal attire — mimicking clothing styles from Britain’s Regency era — and be on their best behavior to impress Queen Charlotte, a character based on the wife of George III.
The summer event was designed to re-create the ecosphere of the wildly popular Netflix show that chronicles the social life of a wealthy British family in the early 19th century and the romances that consume each of the many eligible siblings.
