Tea at Trianon: Lydia Courteille’s New Jewelry Collection

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

Sunday, March 31, 2019

Lydia Courteille’s New Jewelry Collection

It is said to be inspired by Marie-Antoinette although in some of the pieces I have trouble seeing the connection. From JCK Online:

It’s easy to see how the sale of Marie Antoinette’s jewels at auction last fall, and current discussions about women in roles of power, could influence an accomplished Parisian designer like Lydia Courteille to introduce a collection based on the infamous French queen. But it’s how Courteille uses this inspiration to explore the dark side of Marie Antoinette’s story, specifically her epic fall from grandeur to disgrace, that makes the jewelry so intriguingly unexpected. It is not quite the gilded, beribboned, pastry-laden extravaganza that Sofia Coppola gave us in 2006’s Marie Antoinette, but rather something a little more Tim Burton in its expression—albeit with a resplendent haute joaillerie slant.

Launched last week during Paris Fashion Week, the collection encompasses soft Cinderella blues and golden sunshine yellows, a palette that gradually deepens and darkens, as a piece of ripe fruit loses its pigment to the shades of bruising and decay. Spiders (a favorite Courteille motif in general) creep in as they might have infested Marie Antoinette’s dank prison cell at the Conciergerie. (Read more.)