Tea at Trianon: Royal Wedding Dresses

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

Wednesday, October 17, 2018

Royal Wedding Dresses

Marie-Antoinette's wedding gown was made into church vestments but this is a royal wedding gown from the same time period.

It must be mentioned that court gowns were opened in the back, showing some of the shift. However, Marie-Antoinette's gown was too small for her and so left her shift totally exposed in the back. She was only fourteen; it was not her fault. From History Extra:

As queen of France, Marie Antoinette became a leader of fashion – but as a 14-year-old Austrian archduchess she committed a fashion faux pas on the day she married the future King Louis XVI in the royal chapel at the Palace of Versailles in 1770. Strict protocol governed wedding attire for the bride of a French heir to the throne: a cloth-of-silver dress. Unfortunately, the bride’s growing body was not taken into account when the dress was designed and so the resulting bodice was too small, meaning that Marie Antoinette’s attendants were unable to fasten the back of the gown. According to Elizabeth Seymour Percy, Duchess of Northumberland, there was “quite a broad stripe of lacing and shift quite visible, which had a bad effect between two broader stripes of diamonds [the latter of which were a gift from Marie Antoinette’s mother, Empress Maria Theresa of the Habsburg Empire].”

In addition to the ill-fitting dress, Marie Antoinette’s future hairdresser Léonard Autié considered the bride’s strawberry-blonde hair “badly arranged” for the occasion. The comment, written in his journal, may have reflected his rivalry with the hairdresser Sieur Larsenneur, who styled Marie Antoinette’s hair on the day of her wedding in a low, powdered upsweep adorned with decorative gems. Léonard opted for more elaborate hairstyles for Marie Antoinette when he later became her hairdresser. (Read more.)

As for the recent royal wedding gown of Princess Eugenie, go HERE. Share