Actress/activist Jane Fonda wears a red coat during her Fire Drill Fridays protests in Washington, D.C. and, as it turns out, she is sending a message with it. Red is a power color in the fashion world and Fonda is using that to her advantage, or something.

I write about Fonda’s latest lark – a temporary move to Washington, D.C. to organize weekly protests about climate change – each week after she’s been arrested and dragged along a celebrity friend with her. So far, I’ve written four posts about Fire Drill Fridays protests, one for each week. You can read them here, here, here, and here. In each post, I’ve noted her bright red coat, along with her choice of hat. She is fashionable, even when protesting, but it turns out that Ms. Fonda deliberately purchased the red coat to represent the fire in Fire Drill Fridays. What a lame reason to buy a nice coat.

The ankle-length wool coverup was selected specifically by Jane because of the hue and its connection to fire. (The name Fire Drill Fridays was inspired by activist Greta Thunberg saying that people should act like their house is on fire when addressing climate change.)

Doris Domoszlai-Lantner, a fashion and textile historian, points to another connection Fonda’s red coat might make – the color conjures up images of socialist and communist movements. Probably inadvertently, the historian says what many of us think of when we see a picture of Fonda. She doesn’t exactly bring up visions of baseball, hot dogs, apple pie, and Chevrolet, now does she?

“In terms of the coat’s color, what automatically comes to mind for me with red is the association of socialist and communist movements,” Domoszlai-Lantner said. “Soviet Russian artists would use colors and visual cues in their artwork as agitational propaganda, creating pieces like plates or textiles that could be mass-produced and that could be sold to the public.”

That quote comes from an article in the Daily Beast that focuses on finding the coat’s designer label. Fonda feigns ignorance on who makes that coat. Horse hockey. Every item of apparel has a label sewn on the inside collar and women look at those things. A wealthy Hollywood actress used to wearing haute couture (often provided for free publicity) on a regular basis darn well knows who she is wearing.

Fonda is likely looking to make a fashion statement as Nancy Pelosi did in December 2018. You may remember the press making a big deal of Pelosi’s new power on Capitol Hill when the Democrats won back the House.

Max Mara is honored that U.S. House Representative @nancypelosi wore the #MaxMaraFireCoat to her recent historic meeting at the White House. pic.twitter.com/tL2QTSlCgL

— Max Mara (@maxmara) December 13, 2018

Also, this coat gives Fonda an excuse to continue to virtue-signal on climate change. Posing as a dutiful climate alarmist, Jane Fonda says this red coat is her last clothing purchase. I suppose that is an easy statement to make if a person has many closets full of clothes, as she no doubt does, but this, too, seems silly. These grandiose statements are part of the problem with taking the climate alarmists seriously. Instead of making me fear the future if the government doesn’t grab more control over my life, that kind of declaration just makes me roll my eyes. Of course, in Fonda’s case, there are always free designer clothes to wear to the next awards ceremony. Technically, she’s not buying them.

In the clip, the 9 to 5 star said: ‘You see this coat, I needed something red so I went out and found this coat on sale. This is the last article of clothing that I am going to ever buy.’

She added that her decision was inspired by youth climate activist Greta Thunberg, 16, who had made her ‘think a lot about consumerism.’

‘I grew up when consumerism didn’t have such a stranglehold over us so when I talk to people about how we don’t really need to keep shopping – we shouldn’t look to shopping for our identity; we just don’t need more stuff then I have to walk the talk so I’m not buying any more clothes,’ she said.

Welp. That makes as much sense as any of the other nonsense coming out of the mouths of Fonda and her merry mob of malcontents – which isn’t saying much. She’s an actress and can look sincere when she says these things, though, so I guess that is all that matters. You can see Fonda stick out her lower lip in a pout at the end of her no-more-shopping statement.

Here’s Jane Fonda saying that her coat is the last article of clothing she will buy. She acknowleges it may not mean much given her age, but it was important to make the statement. (She also quipped that she’ll have some time on her hands with shopping no longer in the equation. pic.twitter.com/tKhVDM3vwI

— Ted Johnson (@tedstew) November 1, 2019

Another award-winning performance, Jane.