Marie Antoinette - Queen of Style?

The 1700’s became a key style era in Europe when Marie Antoinette took to the thrown and knocked the English Madame de Pompadour off the top of the best-dressed royals list.

It was Madame de Pompadour who made the early 1700s an era of fashion. Mistress to King Louis XIV and woman of the courts, she wore the most fabulous and exquisite gowns with the Robe á la Française soon becoming her signature style. The dress was also known as the ‘sack-back gown’ in reference to its manufacture, using a single piece of fabric for the back panel and over-skirt. This trend took the UK by storm with women as far north as Anne Fairfax of Fairfax house, York, wearing such dresses. Until her death in 1764, Madame de Pompadour (christened Jeanne Antoinette Poisson) wore many gowns, as pictured, hosting a wide, plunging neckline, elbow-length sleeves and a huge overskirt which parted in the middle to reveal a quilted petticoat. Petticoats of the time were often quilted for warmth with a thin layer of wool.

Madame de Pompadour in one of her many gowns

            Dresses, as exhibited in Fairfax House, of the Georgian period focused on pleating, ruffles and trims and were often of elaborate design. These trends were inspired by the Rococo style of the time whereby fluidity, excessive detail and floral designs from artwork influenced the gowns worn by influential women. The Madame de pompadour’s dresses were inspired by the paintings of Antione Watteau. The closely structured bodices, often stiffened with whalebones, were contrasted by large skirts making the female silhouette an exaggerated hourglass.  Metal hoops were introduced in order to make the skirts as large as possibly without the weight or inconvenience of having many petticoats; the century saw in the introduction of my practical fashions for important women. The bodices were cut to a sharp point and often bows were used to lace the corset up at the front. It was details such as these which made the dresses so reminiscent of the Rococo style given the need for romantic details.

            Marie Antoinette on the other hand took inspiration from the English garden and mixed it with the symmetry of French designs to create her own style. Her preference for dresses without a corset and skirts without hoops prompted a new trend in the late 1700s. Instead of a hoop, she let her skirts fall in pleats from the waist. Her dresses generally followed the same style as those of the early 1700s with the ‘sack-back’ cut, opening at the front - though her less structured approach to fashion was favoured by women due to the comfort. Her hairstyles also caused a stir when she broke the trend for powdered grey hair in favour of her natural blonde locks. It was Marie Antoinette’s natural beauty which became a canvas for beautiful clothes in the 1700s. Her dresses took inspiration from nature, seen in the floral designs of many dresses she wore, and the delicacy of such designs complemented her delicate features.

Marie Antionette in all her glory

Empresses in Empire Lines and Queens in Crinolines – Dressing to Impress in the 1800’s

As maxi dresses seem set to stay for Autumn/Winter 2010, we look back to the 1800’s at how the empire line took women by storm and how this may have influenced the modern day maxi.

            It was designer Leroy (who dressed the Empress of France, Josephine Bonaparte) who designed the first 19^th century maxi-equivalent. The dresses she wore were a similar shape to those seen on the highstreet today with stores such as New Look focusing on softer, draping fabrics, falling from an under-bust seam. The style worn by Josephine contrasted the previous century’s fixation on corsets and hooped skirts as women preferred loose-fitting, more comfortable dresses with a low neckline and puffed sleeves. These dresses were more practical than the hooped skirts and corsets which Marie Antoinette detested so greatly in the late 1700s. They could be made from a variety of fabrics therefore making them more accessible to the masses as dresses could be simply muslin or more elaborate silk designs. Dresses were often focused on frills around the hem and lace around the neckline, drawing attention to the bust and ankles.

Not only were the ankles exposed by Leroy’s dresses but when Charles Frederick Worth became the first designer to open a fashion house and produce an entire season’s collection, he also chose ankle-skimming designs. Though he is only rumoured to have invented the crinoline, his use of the ‘crinolinette’ gave women the freedom to do all sorts of activities that the conventional, floor length crinoline prevented them from doing. The crinoline was a compressed horse-hair structure, made of hoops, into a cone-shaped cage. It was worn underneath the skirt and shaped it in a way that petticoats could not. Women preferred the crinoline to petticoats as it was lighter, though sitting down posed a problem. Worth commissioned the ‘crinolinette’; this was a crinoline which finished above the ankles, making dresses more practical. The size of the skirt showed the wealth and power of a woman since it the amount of money a woman had which determined how large she could afford her dresses to be. The silhouette of the female figure became so exaggerated by the use of the crinoline as Worth placed emphasis on the hourglass figure by using corsets to pull in the waist. Unlike Leroy’s designs, Worth returned the waistline of his gowns to the natural waist and even young girls wore close-fitting corsets as this became the height of fashion.

Worth had other ideas however when in 1864 he declared that crinolines were out and bustles were in. Again, a compressed horsehair structure, the bustle quickly changed the female silhouette from hourglass to pear-shaped. The bustle was a horseshoe shaped cage which was attached around the waist and protrudes from the lower back with skirts draping over it. Once again, fashion changed like the flick of a switch, completely unexpected yet still followed by all.