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Fashion helped her to be regarded by the royal family and the people as the rightful queen of France. Blue, Amies observed, "was obviously going to be [her] great colour, dictated by those oversized blue eyes. The start of her reign saw classic couture creations of silk and tulle evening gowns by Sir Norman Hartnell and cinch-waisted dresses by Sir Hardy Amies. Seated on a fat cushion perhaps, she will be the magic that drapes the young Dauphine in everything French, she will make of her the perfect Frenchwoman. During a Commonwealth visit to Canada in 1959, the Queen wore a silk organza gown delicately embroidered with the provincial flower of Nova Scotia, the mayflower.
When I was writing my latest novel, The School of Mirrors, set at Versailles, I read everything about the Versailles court and Caroline Weber's book quickly became one of my favourites. Her entrance in her silver gown into the palace of Versailles, a daughter of the Caesars, beneath the Apollo ceiling, and before the goatish king her new father in law, all that is beautifully told.
Don't be put off by the seemingly frivolous title: this is a superb, academic (almost 100 pages of endnotes and a long bibliography) yet highly readable account of Marie Antoinette and her life at Versailles, full of insight and fascinating detail. Between them, they repositioned the queen as a flashier brand, in light short skirts and high, heavy hair: the pouf do - a plinth for plumes, puffed caps and preposterous set-pieces. Invece si è rivelato un testo dettagliatissimo, che alla narrazione dei fatti biografici (anche qui con tanti aneddoti e dettagli magari poco noti) affianca e intreccia l'evoluzione del costume e, soprattutto, dei significati e simboli negli outfit di Maria Antonietta; di come la moda fosse per lei molto più che un semplice cambio d'abito. The grise of the court pretend friendship but for every wrong step they do her down to her grandpapa, the goatish Louis on the throne.
It is the Dauphine doing but Rose supplied the colour, the boundless eyes on poufs and fashions and the palette of why not have one in every colour.
What they witnessed was the pinnacle of costume drama as a 26-year-old woman pledged her life to the service of the nation.
By working with just a few select designers throughout her reign, the Queen ensured that her clothes were carefully tailored to the unique demands of her role. The premise for this book is that Maria Antoinette did not have a lot of power--certainly not the kind-of power she might have expected to have given her mother. Hartnell and Thomas would be briefed by the Queen’s Ladies-in-Waiting and a series of designs and swatches sent to the palace. As is the poor girls experience of of the court arriving in her bedchamber to observe herself and her buffoon bridegroom on the point of (hopefully) coitus.What she really sold was her genius in putting these together: Bertin combined the shock chic of Schiaparelli with Chanel's appropriation of lower-class cuts and cloths. About her spending she could not be persuaded but her brother did successful harangue her husband a talk that was so scorching and so rough perhaps, that after his departure, the' laxical bridegroom made it atop his bride, and a year later she conceived a child'. And there was a pouf for every occasion, sometimes it was thought it would be necessary to knock down doors when the Sillies couldn't get through in their tall Poufs. That this was a a spoiled and terrible court is obvious but she was a little Maid, representing Vienna, and the hope of a peaceful alliance between the two countries.
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