Tea at Trianon: The Little Ice Age and 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

Monday, October 12, 2015

The Little Ice Age and Fashion

From Madame Gilflurt's blog:

For most of human history, home heating was a rare luxury, and the temperature of human indoor spaces followed that of outdoor spaces far more closely than today. As a result, clothing styles through the ages can tell us something about climate, as well as society. As you can tell from the title, this post is about the traces that weather in Europe left in women’s fashions in particular, and especially in Georgian and Regency times. I don’t claim that this is observable over periods shorter than 20 years or so, but I do think that some interesting clothing changes in this period can be attributed at least partially to weather.

The little Ice Age ran from roughly 1300 to 1880. Since home heating and lighting started to develop rapidly in the mid-19th century, particularly for the better off (which is the group at whom fashion is targeted) effects of weather start to become less important in the second half of Victoria’s reign. The picture to left shows the kinds of temperature changes Europe experienced during this millennium, during which the Medieval Warm Period of the halcyon “Merry Olde England” variety came to an end, and an era of much more variable, unpredictable and colder weather prevailed. (Read more.)