FASHION Magazine

Twilight takes its leave in Vienna, Austria, as I’m transported through a triumphal arch onto the grounds of the historic Liechtenstein Garden Palace. I exit the car, touching heel to pink carpet and following it across a courtyard full of fastidiously placed flickering lanterns parted by two lines of footmen in cream-coloured suits and a pair of white rearing Pegasus statues—all dwarfed by the Romanesque building bathed in silky light behind them. Inside, the grand foyer is flush with fragrant flowers. Commanding the centre is a gilded rococo carriage. A bell tolls and, as I ascend the marble staircase into the 17th-century frescoed ballroom, a fairy tale comes to mind: Cinderella.

This is one enchanted evening, though the woman of the hour is no upstart cinder girl but rather fabled actress Nicole Kidman. In this setting, wearing a beaded Oscar de la Renta gown with shoulder-grazing blonde curls, she looks every bit the part of a princess. But the linchpin accessory for this storybook night is a watch: the latest incarnation of Omega’s legendary Lady-matic, of which Kidman is the face (and wrist). To fête both its ambassador and its timepiece, the watchmaker threw a gala worthy of a fairy tale.