Full name: Queen of Fashion: What Marie Antoinette Wore to the Revolution

Author: Caroline Weber Rank: Rating: Original Rating: Pop Rating: Genres/categories: History, Biographies Culture: France Purchase/reserch links: Amazon Goodreads eBooks.com LibraryThing ISBNs: 9780312427344 9780805079494 0312427344 0805079491

In this dazzling new vision of the ever-fascinating queen, a dynamic young historian reveals how Marie Antoinette's bold attempts to reshape royal fashion changed the future of FranceMarie Antoinette has always stood as an icon of supreme style, but surprisingly none of her biographers have paid sustained attention to her clothes. In Queen of Fashion, Caroline Weber shows how Marie Antoinette developed her reputation for fashionable excess, and explains through lively, illuminating new research the political controversies that her clothing provoked. Weber surveys Marie Antoinette's "Revolution in Dress," covering each phase of the queen's tumultuous life, beginning with the young girl, struggling to survive Versailles's rigid traditions of royal glamour (twelve-foot-wide hoopskirts, whalebone corsets that crushed her organs). As queen, Marie Antoinette used stunning, often extreme costumes to project an image of power and wage war against her enemies. Gradually, however, she began to lose her hold on the French when she started to adopt "unqueenly" outfits (the provocative chemise) that, surprisingly, would be adopted by the revolutionaries who executed her. Weber's queen is sublime, human, and surprising: a sometimes courageous monarch unwilling to allow others to determine her destiny. The paradox of her tragic story, according to Weber, is that fashion--the vehicle she used to secure her triumphs--was also the means of her undoing. Weber's book is not only a stylish and original addition to Marie Antoinette scholarship, but also a moving, revelatory reinterpretation of one of history's most controversial figures. Similar books: To the Scaffold by Carolly Erickson The Black Count by Tom Reiss Marie Antoinette by Antonia Fraser Fatal Purity by Ruth Scurr The Lost King of France by Deborah Cadbury Liberty by Lucy Moore Napoleon's Master by David Lawday Marie Antoinette by Stefan Zweig Gilded Youth by Kate Cambor Napoleon and Josephine by Evangeline Bruce The Days of the French Revolution by Christopher Hibbert Love and Louis XIV by Antonia Fraser Madame de Pompadour by Evelyne Lever The Reign Of Napoleon Bonaparte by Robert Asprey Athenais by Lisa Hilton Marie Antoinette by Evelyne Lever The Boys In The Boat by Daniel James Brown Destiny of the Republic by Candice Millard The Children of Henry VIII by Alison Weir Defying Hitler by Sebastian Haffner