Paris symbolizes the world's capital of fashion and chic in the eyes of many. And those who think that French fashion was born with the little black dress in Coco Chanel's studio have probably not heard of the woman who turned her love of fashion into real-life period politics - Queen Marie Antoinette. The story of her arrival in Paris, her name change, and her political marriage that ended in tragic deaths under the guillotine, reads like a historical novel.
But if you think about it, this is also a coming-of-age story of a girl who was forced to leave home at the age of 15 for the “big city” (in this case, a palace). Versailles of the 18th century), and her rebellion against the establishment, which, like any teenage girl, was mostly expressed in fashion and clothing details. But unlike the rest of the world's teenage girls, Malka's fashion statements French This, accompanies us to this day. Therefore, we have briefly summarized for you several aspects of Marie Antoinette's fashionable life that prove how relevant the lady continues to be today, more than two hundred years after her death.
A woman's best friends
In one of her most memorable scenes in the film “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes,” Marilyn Monroe dances in a pink dress among tuxedo-clad men who shower her with diamonds, singing that “diamonds are a woman’s best friend.” Elizabeth Taylor wrote a memoir devoted entirely to her love of diamonds, called “My Love Affair with Jewelry.” But before them all, it was Marie Antoinette who nearly bankrupted her husband, King Louis XVI. France, due to her love of all things glittery. And in her case, it damaged her reputation for ages.
To be fair, Marie Antoinette was not really the hedonistic, greedy queen that the underground journalists and dissidents of her time made her out to be (for evidence - she never said "If there is no bread, eat cake"!). The Austrian princess, Maria Josepha Antonia, was forced to leave the home of her mother, the Austro-Hungarian Empress Maria Theresa, and her 14 (!!) older brothers and sisters, cross the border into France alone ("alone" relatively speaking, of course, if you don't count the four carriages that followed her...) and try to fit in at the extremely materialistic, hedonistic, and cruel court of Versailles.
Even as a child, the princess suffered from the excessive demands of the Palace of Versailles regarding the appearance of the future bride of the Crown Prince. For example, when she was six years old, her mother invited a dentist to the palace, who broke the little girl's teeth and moved them (without anesthesia, of course...) until the French envoys confirmed that her teeth were straight enough for their taste. And if you think that today's Parisian fashion world is cruel to the body shape of women and girls, what would you say about a princess who, on her wedding day, heard all the ladies of the court giggling behind her back because the bodice of her wedding dress didn't close properly?
Under these circumstances, coupled with the fact that everyone expected the princess to bear them a regent by a husband who had been unable to function sexually for many years, the young girl could hardly be blamed for deciding to compensate herself by purchasing all the silks, feathers, and diamonds that the French treasury could afford.
This series of pleasures continued until 1785, when a pair of Parisian diamond jewelers named Bohammer and Bassenge decided to exploit the queen’s greedy reputation to make money. Years earlier, Louis XV (Louis XVI’s grandfather) had commissioned them to make a magnificent diamond-encrusted colossus for his mistress, Madame du Barry. But the old king died before the work was completed, the mistress was banished from the palace, and the diamond jewelers were left with a colossus worth 15 million livres—a sum that could have supported a middle-class French family for five years.
When they had difficulty selling the jewel, the two teamed up with a charlatan named Jeanne de la Motte, who had managed to infiltrate the ranks of French aristocratic society by being the mistress of the French ambassador to Austria, Cardinal de Rouen. De la Motte, knowing that her patron was a little in love with the beautiful Marie Antoinette, began writing him fake letters in the queen's name, making him believe that the queen loved him back. She then hired a prostitute, who looked a bit like Marie Antoinette, to secretly meet with de Rouen and ask him for the jewel as a gift.
The enamored de Rouen purchased the giant with the best of the French treasury, but when he tried to give it to the queen in public, she was shocked and claimed that she had never asked for such an expensive gift. In those years, France was already in heavy debt due to the war with the British for control of the colonies in North America, and the hungry citizens took to the streets to demonstrate. So the queen had already managed to curb her extravagance, but it was already too late: de Rouen was publicly humiliated, and Marie Antoinette's reputation made her public enemy number one. The mistress and the diamond dealers, on the other hand, pocketed a handsome sum of money.
Self-expression
One of the biggest fashion trends of 2015 was the printing of famous logos on clothes. The young and talented designer Jeremy Scott, who joined the Italian brand Moschino last year, even created an entire collection that featured clothes in the shape of the McDonald's logo, the character of Barbie and the face of SpongeBob SquarePants. In fact, you could say that in an era where we are busy expressing our feelings on social media day and night, expressing our thoughts on clothes was a natural step.
It is hard for us to think of a time when the right to express personal opinions was reserved for the privileged few. That is, the nobility. And even among the nobility, women were forced to keep their mouths shut and express their feelings only behind closed doors. But Queen Marie Antoinette had a desperate need for self-expression: During the first seven years of her marriage to Louis XVI, the couple failed to have sex and produce heirs. And since the status of a queen in a foreign kingdom rose and fell on her heirs, Marie Antoinette’s situation was particularly precarious.
Not only that, but the political parties in the palace were divided into those who hated her for being Austrian and demanded the eradication of foreign influence from Versailles, and those who hated her because she supported her sworn enemy - Madame du Bary, the retired mistress of the dead king. Notice the common denominator? Therefore, the queen decided to take action and use her body and hair as a protector of her status in the palace.
Using products like gauze, hair extensions, and even flour, she created hairstyles so tall that she effectively became the “shoulder-higher” of the court. Women from all over Europe quickly adopted these colossal hairstyles, which were also adorned with feathers, fresh fruits, and vegetables. In effect, they were saying, “We may be obligated to remain silent, but you cannot ignore our presence.”
Over time, the Queen also began to use her hairstyle as a way to express political views. For example, in a year when the harvest was particularly good, she sported a high coiffure adorned with fresh oat stalks from the field. And in 1778, following the French Navy's victory over the English, she expressed her support for the Navy by adorning her hairstyle with a massive and beautifully equipped model of the French flagship!
Casual
Part of the charm of French women lies in their seemingly innate ability to wear everyday, simple clothes in an extremely chic way, as if the frayed jeans and buttoned-up men's shirt on their delicate bodies were tailor-made especially for them in a studio. GivenchyIndeed, France is the birthplace of “casual chic” and this time the credit belongs entirely to the mother of modern fashion – Coco Chanel, who wore a striped shirt and masculine cotton trousers, inspired by the fishermen in the French seaside town of Deauville, while other women were still deeply embalmed in corsets and mumbling.
About 40 years later, the sex kitten of French cinema was photographed - Brigitte Bardot – for a film set in another French fishing town – Saint-Tropez, and she also paid homage to the local fishermen’s clothing, but this time with the addition of flat ballerina shoes. Thus was born the style of simplicity that French women excel at, and it continues to be a fashion inspiration for Parisian fashionistas to this day.
About two hundred years before Chanel and Bardot, it was Marie Antoinette who got tired of suffocating corsets and exaggerated bluster and decided that simple was the most beautiful. Only, unlike her fashionable heirs, her struggle was waged against French culture itself:
In the years following her coronation, Marie Antoinette, like her predecessors, was forced to wear the “royal corset.” This was an especially cruel torture device in the form of a corset that was sewn to a thickness of only four fingers, without supportive straps or padding!! French aristocrats believed that a carefully packed upper body symbolized toughness of character and self-control of the highest level, and for this reason, that corset, called the “Grand Corps” or loosely translated: “the superior body,” was an item of clothing reserved exclusively for the most noble women in France.
But poor Marie Antoinette only needed a few wears to realize that she would also like to breathe or eat without difficulty. And she refused to wear the royal corset, claiming that she was thin enough to do without it. This small rebellion was nothing less than a resounding slap in the face of the supporters of tradition at the Palace of Versailles, and they began to whisper that Marie Antoinette's refusal to wear the corset was related to her inability to get pregnant.
French nobles even shouted at her: “If you refuse to give us an heir, at least don’t insult us with the sight of your loose belly!!” Things even reached Marie Antoinette’s mother, the Austrian Empress Maria Theresa, who had to intervene and convince her daughter to dress accordingly to prevent a diplomatic incident.
So the French queen bowed her head and surrendered to tradition. But it didn’t last long, and in 1776 she decided that she had done enough for French tradition, and launched a fashion revolt that was so great that it changed women’s fashion in Europe for almost a century: she abandoned the heavy palace dresses made of velvet and silk, and began wearing loose-fitting dresses, which not only did not require a corset but were made of a simple gauze fabric (“chemise”) that was considered a petticoat in those days!
She replaced her magnificent jewelry with a thin silk ribbon tied around her neck. And as if that weren't enough, whenever the queen went out in a carriage, she also ordered a men's riding jacket, sewn for her in full length like a dress, to accompany this ensemble. In the 18th century, this look was considered what in today's terms would probably be a combination of lingerie and a men's blazer.
Despite the initial shock of the palace and claims from the queen's opponents that she was dressing like a prostitute, this style of clothing became extremely popular among European women within a few years, to the point that even her sworn enemy, Madame du Barrie, began to adopt the style.
About two years later, in 1778, the queen gave birth to her first daughter, Marie Thérèse, and the French nobility calmed down and allowed the queen to keep her “little follies.” Thus, the style of the white gauze dress with its straight and simple cut was preserved for a long time. In the early 19th century – many years after Marie Antoinette’s tragic death under the guillotine blade – the dress became the fashion order, so much so that even Joséphine de Beauharnais, who was the wife of the greatest opponent of the monarchy in French history – Napoleon Bonaparte – wore a similar dress in one of her first portraits.
Even the simple silk ribbon that Marie Antoinette wore around her neck became a cultural icon. And in the years following the queen's death, women all over Europe continued to mourn the death of that original diva by wearing a thin red ribbon that resembled a blade cut around their necks. The collar-like ribbons have come and gone in women's fashion over the years and centuries, and what started as a playful trend for a young queen looking for a look that would shake up French tradition in the 18th century is making a comeback this year as a must-have item on every fashion show for the spring/summer 2015 season.
Indeed, one only needs to glance at the latest shows by Marc Jacobs and Vivienne Westwood at London Fashion Week to understand that collars around the neck are the coveted item of the summer 2015 season. And we are left to wonder - would the fashion world as we know it today even exist without the undisputed queen of fashion - Marie Antoinette?
Ariella Goichman Garber from the Fashion History Blog: Timeless Hemlines]
Oh, how I enjoyed reading the article, and I will look for more on the subject.
Yes, I don't know where I can read about children in the 18th century.
Fashion, toys, studies, education, etc.