Tuesday, January 2, 2018

Modern Fashion and Versailles

From Living It:
“We always have this image of Versailles as a place of frivolity but nothing has been more documented than fashion at Versailles. It has been the topic of speeches, studies, documents and dress codes,” explains Laurence Benaïm. “From the day the Duke of Orleans, Louis XIV’s brother, went to the Innocents’ Market, where the slaughterhouses were, and returned with soiled and blood-stained feet, the red heel became fashionable. A detail that we find again in the famous portrait of Louis XIV by Hyacinthe Rigaud.”

Next to the pictures, texts recall how a micro-event could launch a trend or news became the name of a particular colour. The terms used to describe the different objects of fashion were sometimes very poetic but mostly full of eccentricity. Among our favourites is the “doe’s belly” yellow, a sombre shade called “London soot” and the nuance “opera brûlé” after the fatal conflagration that destroyed the Paris Opera House in 1781. (Read more.)
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