Tea at Trianon: Lady Hamilton: The 18th-Century Beauty Who Revived Ancient Greek 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

Wednesday, May 20, 2026

Lady Hamilton: The 18th-Century Beauty Who Revived Ancient Greek Fashion

From The Greek Reporter:

Lady Hamilton, a woman who became famous in Europe for her astonishing beauty as well as her political influence, also spread ancient Greek-inspired fashion across the continent for the first time. Born into poverty and working as a scullery maid in her teenage years, she was scorned by her first two lovers who took advantage of her youthful beauty and then left her. Her third lover, however, was Sir William Hamilton, the English ambassador to Naples, who, against all social norms, then made her his wife. Lady Hamilton soon became a fashion icon and started trends, such as draping herself in simple garments that were inspired by classical times and ancient Greece, in particular. She called this Greek-inspired theme “Attitudes” and was known to have used her many shawls during her public performances based on ancient Greek symposia.
Goethe famously wrote of Lady Hamilton: “She wears a Greek garb, becoming to her to perfection. She then merely loosens her locks, takes a pair of shawls, and effects changes of postures, moods, gestures, mien, and appearance that make one really feel as if one were in some dream….”

“Successively standing, kneeling, seated, reclining, grave, sad, sportive, teasing, abandoned, penitent, alluring, threatening, agonized…one follows the other, and grows out of it. She knows how to choose and shift the simple folds of her single kerchief for every expression, and to adjust it into a hundred kinds of headgear,” he wrote. (Read more.)