Tea at Trianon: The Allure of Regency Fashion

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Friday, May 10, 2013

The Allure of Regency Fashion

In France, it is known as Empire fashion. To quote author Philippa Jane Keyworth:

Enlightenment ideas had led to the admiration of classical civilisations, such as Rome and Greece, and this admiration gradually filtered into fashion with women’s dresses losing the rigid, falsified outlines of the Robe a la Francaise, and instead embracing the neo-classical loose-fitting almost ethereal designs of the Regency dresses. It also led to a more rational dress-style for men, a more practical style, discarding the frock-coat which could get in the way and instead embracing the cut-away Redingote and eventual tail-coat sported by the fashionable Brummel.

The rise of consumerism allowed fashions to change more easily, though no-where near the rate we witness today. It also meant that middling classes were able to follow the fashions, and that demand for exotic new materials such as muslin could be met by changing domestic manufacturing. (Read entire post.)