Her most recent and, I think, most successful book: QUEEN OF FASHION: WHAT MARIE ANTIONETTE WORE TO THE REVOLUTION was the basis for the talk. Like the good titles we discussed in my last post on October 6, this title is about more than the chemise-like white dress the former Queen actually wore to the guillotine. It is all about the choices she made that led to that moment, about how she made most of her political statements through what she wore. More often than not, especially as the years wore on, those choices were reactive rather than showing an awareness of what was coming.
After this talk, I can date any painting of Marie Antoinette based on what style of clothing she wears. The picture at below: when she was trying, almost desperately, to convince the people that she was everything a queen should be.
This painting by Vallyer-Coster shows her dressed in classic queenly garb with a relatively simple coiffeur (see blog by Amanda on August 27 on the style eaerlier in her career as queen) and pearls, the traditional jewel of a French monarch.
In the question and answer period following, and in the nature of an, as yet unresearched, aside Weber expressed the opinion that the inclination to make judgments about what women who are in the public eye wear may come directly from Marie Antoinette.
Before Marie Antoinette came to Versailles it was the men who were the fashion focus. With deliberate effort she changed that and for the first time it was the Dauphine's and later the Queen's choices in fashion that made her a trend setter and eventually led to her fall. It helped that her husband, Louis XVI was shy, unimpressive and not at all interested in attracting public attention.
I mention this as Maureen Dowd of the NYT and Robin Givahn of the Washington Post have both written on the phenomenon during this election cycle. I would love to share lunch with the Givahn, Dowd and Weber and listen to their discussion.
In a related coincidence I have been looking through what can only be described as an adult picture book, A DRESS FOR DIANA by design team David and Elizabeth Emanuel. It is coffee table book of two hundred pages about the selection and production of Diana Spencer’s wedding gown.
“We were both aware as designers that Diana was young and inexperienced and that she was going into St. Paul’s as Lady Diana Spencer, but that she would come out as the Princess of Wales, the wife for the heir to the throne.”
Whatever you may think of that dress it did accomplish exactly that goal, that is suited the fairy tale AND the royal nature of it. Despite the fact that almost two hundred years separate the two ill-fated royals, there is an amazing echo of Marie Antoinette in Diana’s life and style. I would be willing to wager that anyone who pays close attention to clothes could date a photo of Diana by the style of dress she is wearing, It changed almost as much as she did.
There is no doubt in my mind that I am a very visual person. I love watching people but also respond emotionally and sometimes physically to clothes, fabric, jewelry, and architecture not to mention the more traditional works of art such as painting and sculpture.
So tell me how do you see fashion? Are clothes something you pretty much ignore? What do they tell you about a person or do they influence how you “see” that person?
How important is what your characters wear? To you as the author. To your hero and heroine and/or the people around them?
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