Queen of Fashion: What Marie Antoinette Wore to the Revolution

By Caroline Weber

Book Overview

In this dazzling new vision of the ever-fascinating queen, a dynamic young historian reveals how Marie Antoinette's bold attempts to reshape royal fashion changed the future of France Marie Antoinette has always stood as an icon of supreme style, but surprisingly none of her biographers have paid sustained attention to her clothes. In Queen of Fashion , Caroline Weber shows how Marie Antoinette developed her reputation for fashionable excess, and explains through lively, illuminating new research the political controversies that her clothing provoked. Weber surveys Marie Antoinette's "Revolution in Dress," covering each phase of the queen's tumultuous life, beginning with the young girl, struggling to survive Versailles's rigid traditions of royal glamour (twelve-foot-wide hoopskirts, whalebone corsets that crushed her organs). As queen,Marie Antoinette used stunning, often extreme costumes to project an image of power and wage war against her enemies. Gradually, however, she began to lose her hold on the French when she started to adopt "unqueenly" outfits (the provocative chemise) that, surprisingly, would be adopted by the revolutionaries who executed her. Weber's queen is sublime, human, and surprising: a sometimes courageous monarch unwilling to allow others to determine her destiny. The paradox of her tragic story, according to Weber, is that fashion--the vehicle she used to secure her triumphs--was also the means of her undoing. Weber's book is not only a stylish and original addition to Marie Antoinette scholarship, but also a moving, revelatory reinterpretation of one of history's most controversial figures.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0805079491
• ISBN13: 9780805079494
• Release Date: September 2006
• Publisher: Henry Holt & Company
• Length: 412 Pages
• Weight: 1.74 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.4" x 6.5" x 9.6"

Customer Reviews

Uncommonly Good

Typically I would expect a book about Marie Antoinette and the French Revolution to be pretty dry. This book is extremely well-written and well-researched and frankly I couldn't put it down. The great pictures were also very helpful as I had no idea what some of the more obscure items looked like. If you like sociology, fashion, art or art history, you will enjoy this book.

A curious counterpoint to Antonia Fraser's biography

This book should definitely be read after one reads Antonia Fraser's "Marie Antoniette: A Journey." This is not a definitive biography, nor does it claim to be. However, it looks at the ill-fated queen in a unique and textual way- through the clothing choices she made at every juncture in her tenure as Dauphine, and later Queen of France. Weber analyzes everything from color to fabric, hair to corsets in this impeccably researched work. She makes the reader conscious of the UNCONSCIOUS messages we send in our clothing, making one rethink the social consequences of an "I'm with Stupid" T-shirt. Making the satorial social and back again, Weber looks at the way in which Marie Antoniette affected her public and the rebellion she was able to mount without saying a word. Obviously interest in this book will be high due to the Kirsten Dunst movie. However, this book gave me more of a sympathy for the queen who was thrust into the public eye in France and the decisions made by her and for her. It gave me a different picture of a rebellious queen that I couldn't find in the film. A great read for anyone interested in fashion, Marie Antoniette, and the French Revolution.

An enlightening and entertaining exploration of history, fashion, gender, and power

Marie Antoinette is all the rage. From Sophia Coppola's new movie to a bevy of recent magazine articles, the infamous queen is making headlines. But the spotlight is nothing new for her; people have been interested in her life and activities since she arrived in France as a 14-year-old princess. One such person is Caroline Weber, a French professor teaching at Barnard College, Columbia University who has written a fascinating biography of Marie Antoinette titled QUEEN OF FASHION. Weber approaches the queen's life story from a totally unique perspective: what Marie Antoinette chose to wear (and what was chosen for her to wear) at various stages in her life. Weber suggests that her fashion choices reflect her attempts to assert her identity and to gain power in a culture where she was expected to be a passive representative of the throne. Even before she married the future King of France as a young girl, the Austrian Archduchess was told that her looks and appearance were of the utmost importance. She had to undergo a makeover that included extensive, painful dental work and the powdering of her strawberry blond hair, just for marriage negotiations to continue. As she was handed over by the Austrian entourage to the French, she was stripped naked in a room of strangers and redressed in what was considered to be more appropriate (that is, more French) attire. Right away the young woman knew that fashion was what she was expected to be interested in, and she decided to use it to her advantage. She became a figure that challenged propriety, the roles of women and the nobility in her society through the clothing and hairstyles she wore. Weber convincingly demonstrates how Marie Antoinette, rendered essentially powerless by social and political norms, managed to assert some influence, through her appearance, that extended beyond France's borders. In the beginning the princess (later queen) was adored. French society was enamored of her, and women especially found her refreshing and relatable. The nobility and other traditionalists were less taken by her. However, by the end of her life she was reviled and demonized, accused of sexual misconduct, irresponsible overspending and other corruptions. And, as France found itself heading toward revolution, her foreign birth and foreign ties were impossible for the nation to ignore. During every stage of her life in France, Marie Antoinette used dress to express herself --- even when she was hated, she was copied. In fact, after her execution by guillotine, the fashion was for women to wear a thin red ribbon tied around their necks. Her choices in fashion were often overtly political, challenging to the social order and always deeply personal. Weber's examination of Marie Antoinette's life through what she wore is engaging, eye-opening and immensely enjoyable. QUEEN OF FASHION is a truly enlightening and entertaining exploration of history, fashion, gender and power. Weber manages to balance an academic's e

Sartorial savoir-faire

"Queen of Fashion" is a stylish and engaging tour de force that offers a truly original perspective on the life of France's ill-fated queen. In her absorbing and rigorously researched account of Marie Antoinette's life, Weber convincingly shows that the history of the queen's wardrobe and the court politics at Versailles are inextricably interwoven threads of French history. The stylish essence of this book is its ability to communicate the complexity of the period's politics with an accessibility and elegance that will appeal to a broad range of readers. A must-read for anyone interested in the history of fashion or France.

The Politics of Fashion

In this elegantly written, fast paced book, Caroline Weber shows that Marie Antoinette was not an empty-headed and materialistic teenager, but rather a conscious political actor in the turbulent times of the French Revolution. Boxed and ribboned in the confining world of court fashion and etiquette, Weber entertainingly and authoritatively illustrates how the doomed French queen used the fashion packaging which Louis XIV had created to stifle the aristocrats of his court, turning them from warriors into powdered courtiers, and used it as both an individualistic and politically expressive force. This book not only gives an accurate and nuanced historical account of Marie-Antoinette's relationship with fashion missing from Sofia Coppola's movie, its also a great read!