‘La Reine en Gaulle’: the galling strength of Marie Antoinette’s aesthetic vision.
Words by Maddie McClean
The fashion world was rocked by Galliano’s recent collection for Maison Margiela, as we witnessed the resurrection of the drama and story-telling power of so many 90s runways (think Muglers’ 1995 collection at the Cirque d’Hiver). Hourglass chiffon dresses paired with glassy makeup and outrageous hairdos (not excluding merkins) transported us through Brassai’s vision of 20s Paris, and what a delightful journey it was. Yet part of its power is what lies at the heart of fashion; the power to scandalise and seduce. Fashion is by definition transient, what is a la mode shifts seasonally, but such shows are timeless. They transcend instruction of what fashion ‘should be’, a question subverted too by the creators of the upcoming Norman Rea fashion show. ‘The Threads of the North’ promises to shock, but to understand the perennially subversive power of fashion let’s take a look at an 18th century precedent; the (drum roll please) ‘Chemise a la Reine’. The Threads of Marie Antoinette’s wardrobe were amongst some of the most lavish and laboured of all time, staging their own personal Revolution in a time of huge social upheaval. But it was the Chemise that scandalised the most, and whose portrait ‘La Reine en Gaulle’ by Le Brun was ordered to be removed from the Salon of the Académie Royale, as word spread that the queen had been painted in her underwear.
“La Reine en Gaulle”, Le Brun, 1783, oil on canvas.
Flounces of muslin frame the Austrian princess’ porcelain features, as delicate as the feather that softly beckons our gaze. The rose hints at the Romantic, pastoral ideals expressed by the dress, as well as its ultimately horrifying pastiche of rural life; it is a queen’s idea of peasant style, and renders conceivable the idea that her final words really were ‘Let Them Eat Cake!’. But ever misunderstood in her pursuit of an aesthetic rather than political life, the queen was motivated by the more benign wish to simply free herself of the highly structured confines of court dress in order to better frolic around the gardens of her quarters in the Petit Trianon at Versailles, pictured below in a still from Coppola’s eponymous 2006 film: Marie Antoinette.
Still from Marie Antoinette, directed by Sofia Coppola, 2006.
Amongst the long grasses she could escape the scrutiny of courtly life and live out what us chronically online might call a Rousseauian cottagecore era, imagining she was a lowly shepherdess, magically unburdened by the real toil and struggle of that social position. This was unacceptable to her national audience, who expected her to publicly fulfil her role as a powerful monarch with a wardrobe to match. And yet it was her material extravagance that helped lead to her downfall, so she was both damned for wearing too much silk and damned for wearing none. Either way, her fashion choices were the source of scandal as she transgressed societal expectations to fulfil her own personal vision. The power of her aesthetic influence can be seen in the anecdote recounting how she put thousands of silk manufacturers out of work as she popularised the Chemise, especially affecting Lyon, the silk centre of France at the time.
The Chemise itself is made of lightweight cotton, and a modern reconstruction estimates needing 4 yards of material 45” wide. (For any historical costumers out there, this link will lead you to a beginner friendly paper pattern with instructions. That being said, I’m having my fair share of struggles with it at the moment!).
https://reconstructinghistory.com/products/rh819-1780s-chemise-dress?_pos=1&_sid=4fb6e3ae9&_ss=r
The typically starched white or sometimes pale blue fabric would have been expensive to keep clean and was therefore in itself a status symbol, deepening the patronisation of this pastiche. Despite its loose, free-flowing form, it would have still been worn with stays underneath, to retain a modicum of formality. It had also a slightly raised waist, foreshadowing the Empire lines of the Regency period. Often tied around the middle with a large bowed ribbon as in the Vigee portrait, it had an overall girlish and carefree air about it. Compare that to its sister portrait in formal court wear.
“Marie Antoinette dit à la Rose”, Louise Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun, 1783, oil on canvas.
However, Marie Antoinette was not responsible for inventing the style, only popularising the fashion of French expats and free women of colour of the West Indies, where the climate called for a breezy build. Whitehead argues that this foreign source could explain the reaction to her dress as another example of her othering by the French people who were already suspicious of her Austrian heritage, presuming her a spy. The dress then only symbolises her as a woman, as opposed to a distinctly French woman, as would have been expected for a royal figurehead.
“Free West Indian Creoles in Elegant Dress”, Agostino Brunias, c 1770, oil on canvas.
The Queen forged ahead with a galling force of aesthetic vision, most likely aware of the ideological power of fashion, yet choosing to pursue personal taste over politics. And yet, the personal is the political, so her refusal to conform saw her wearing this very dress to the guillotine only a decade after this portrait was first hung in the Salon. One imagines blood soaking the gauzy material and reflects on the power of fashion to scandalise. It cannot help but engage with the political, communicating so much without words. Galliano’s creations, in their theatrically sumptuous, sheer similarity to the Chemise, are political in their stimulation of imagination, opposed for example to the numbing uniformity of totalitarian aesthetics. Both innovators saw what fashion can be as opposed to what it should be, and expressed this confidently. Whilst we can’t endorse the queen’s naïve neglect of a starving people, we can admire her artistic resolution and reflect on the rippling effect of something as seemingly banal as the daily outfit choice. Endearingly, the evidence of the queen’s quotidian fashion choices can be seen in the pinpricked swatches in her extant Wardrobe Book now in the French National Archives. Personally, I very much look forward to experiencing the force of uncompromising vision this Wednesday at the Norman Rea fashion show. Not to be missed!
