EBOOK
About
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.
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.
Related Subjects
Reviews
"Caroline Weber weaves her portrait of Marie Antoinette--and pre-revolutionary France--from the very fabric of the Queen's wardrobe. Here is fashion at its most cut-throat and history at its most sumptuous; an original, arresting tale, of high stakes all around."
Stacy Schiff, author of A Great Improvisation
"Queen of Fashion is a marvelous read. Fascinating in its rich detail yet also deeply moving, no other book about the tragic Marie Antoinette so captures her fatal flair for fashion. Caroline Weber not only combines fresh insights with new material, she also has a dazzling style of writing that most authors would kill for. This is a book to be read and reread and then passed among friends."
Amanda Foreman, author of Georgiana
"Caroline Weber deftly details the volatile interplay of fashion and politics during Marie Antoinette's reign as a sartorial trend-setter. A witty account of fashion as dynastic high stakes, this rereading of the lead-up to the French Revolution sees the queen's vestimentary caprices as politically motivated, an ill-fated approach to her personal disenfranchisement. An original look at a turning point in European history."
Carolyn Burke, author of Lee Miller: A Life