Tea at Trianon: Fashioning Masculinities: The Art of Menswear

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, July 10, 2022

Fashioning Masculinities: The Art of Menswear

Henry VIII

From Art in America:

The role of fashion in the invention of European male identities is also the theme of “Fashioning Masculinities: The Art of Menswear,” currently on view at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. The introductory wall text invites us to “stride, saunter or sashay into a world of exploring and celebrating how designers, tailors and artists, clients, models and sitters, fashion and refashion masculinities.” In this joyous show, “masculinities” and “menswear” are understood as broad, fluid terms, and some 100 items dating from the Renaissance to today are presented in three sequential thematic sections: “Undressed,” “Overdressed,” and “Redressed.” (Read more.)