Marie-Antoinette et sa modiste Rose Bertin

[tattisalles1989]

Rose Bertin was the fashion minister ....frenches....hehehe

[X33vince]

The queen's mother, Empress Marie Therese of Austria, seeing her daughter clad in garments too provocating for her taste, thinks she doesn't represent her rank enough. This very conservative woman tells so in her letters. ''People repeat to me too often that you wear feathers and ribbons that make you look like a comedian, rather than like a beautiful queen.''

[X33vince]

But Marie Antoinette doesn't care and dismisses her mother's advice. She's bored with her husband, and fashion gives her a distraction. Deprived with a political role, she wants to make reforms in the sole space that remains hers : appearances.

[X33vince]

Rose Bertin, who works as a dressmaker, will help the soveraign to define her taste and to make it known to the court. This woman the queen qualifies pompously as Minister of Fashion, gives her advice and influence in her dressing extravaganza. Both are the inventors of High Fashion.

[X33vince]

''Well, Rose Bertin is the fashionable dressmaker of the day. Imagine like today Carl Lagerfeld, imagine Coco Chanel...''

''We said one like this.''

''Like this.''

''Three like this one.''

''The red embroided fabric. Right ?''

''For example, some tell about Marie Antoinette locking herself for hours in her little appartments with Rose Bertin, and Rose Bertin trying on her all her novelties.''

[X33vince]

''Marie Antoinette was in a sense Rose Bertin's muse, she fed Rose Bertin's creativity, and Rose Bertin used it to become more reknown, and multiply demands about her work.''

It's a revolutionary concept in Versailles : the queen accepts to share her stylist with other customers. Elegant women come all to the Great Moghol, Rose Bertin's shop, St Honore Street in Paris.

[X33vince]

They fight for being dressed as Marie Antoinette is. But copying the queen isn't exactly in the means of any middle class woman. The queen spends every year more money, because fashion is changing and she must remain pretty. Her passion for dresses will soon become quite an obsession.

[X33vince]

''She's someone who always passes an astonishing lot of commands, who make collections of clothes, for example in 1784 she commands 258 lace scarfs, and in 1787, 437 which means more than one scarf for one day.''

[X33vince]

''So we can see a sort of frenzy, that her chambermaid Madame de Sèvres can't really manage with. Hence this reputation of being a woman who wastes the state's money.''

''She was accused of spending the realm's money. It's right she spent a lot. But let's say that in comparison with the real deficit, it was almost nothing.''

[X33vince]

''All that Marie Antoinette buys are dresses without respect for the etiquette. That's what will fuel the reproaches. In the end, she uses the royal treasure like a simple private woman; she aims for her own contentment, not for her people's, or the greatness of the State.''

[X33vince]

The national archives registrate the fashion of this time, giving precious indications about what Marie Antoinette was wearing day by day. Cotton, silk, lace, little bits of everyone of her dresses have been kept there. In an official way, these books allow to follow the command of each dress. In the real way, they are there in order to control how much the queen spends.

[X33vince]

''There comes a moment when the realm of France begins to lack cruelly of money, and when the king asks the queen to restrain herself about the way she lives, in order to save.''

It is the end of excentricities, of fabric and ribbons orgies. At the head of society, people only praise nature. The queen is part of the movment and dreams about dressing like a farmer's girl, in a simple cotton dress.

[X33vince]

The french splendor is definitively upset.

''it's a little bit of a revolution, because for a queen of France, to appear in an untidy shirt-gown, very simple, it doesn't belong to common rules, to the etiquette. It's known that Marie Antoinette hated etiquette that she lived as a constraint . So you can see here, still underskirt, but no ''baskets'' on the sides.''

[X33vince]

''So Marie Antoinette tries to free her body, she doesn't want any constraints, and in the end adopts the clothing that allows her to live, to play, to enjoy herself, to move as she pleases.''

But the queen is not Mrs Anybody. And her dress will be the start of a real scandal. During an exposition in Paris, the people discover this official portrait, on which the liberties Marie Antoinette takes will gain her only more hate from those who already don't like her.

[X33vince]

''It appeared as indecent, as people said, that a queen showed herself dressed as any chambermaid.''

''The royal image is gravely threatened and this portrait is very quickly removed to be replaced with Marie Antoinette with the rose, to appease the minds.''

Her tiny revolution regarding appearances will be enough to knock around three centuries of clothing tradition. (end)

[nokomarie1963]

@X33vince Cool, thanks.

[X33vince]

You want me to try and translate ?