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starlightmasquerade.com photos
FRENCH DRESSING The extraordinary ornamentation
of 18th-century formal wear can be seen in these photos
of a modern re-creation. Note that the stomacher is
an insert that fastens over the bodice front.
BODICES AND BOWS
Clothing for the aristocratic
French woman
in the 18th century took
real skill and patience to
put on, and frequently
required more than a
few attendents' assistance.
Open-fronted
bodices could be filled in with a decorative "stomacher,"
as seen, top, often festooned with numerous
ribbons and bows, above. The process of dressing
began with a chemise or shift, below, a loose-fitting
smock usually
made of cotton.
Over that was
worn a corset,
and then layers
of petticoats
with a hoop
frame, followed
by the various
sections of the
outer gown.
TOILETTE TOIL
A young woman
dresses for the evening
in "La Toilette" by
Madrazo y Garreta.
wikimedia.org photo
and “Walking in the Luxembourg Gardens in Disguise
and Getting So Angry Over Soldiers’ Advances
that She Closed the Gardens to the Public, Who Hated
Her For It.”
Born Marie Louise Élisabeth d’Orléans, the Duchess
of Berry was a “legitimized” granddaughter of Louis
XIV, who allowed her to live in the Luxembourg Palace
after her husband died in 1714. She was also “one
of the most odious young women whom the Court of
France had ever seen.” That’s the blunt assessment
of H. Noel Williams, who in his book Unruly Daughters
(1913) goes on to say: “She had all her mother’s
arrogance and deceit; all her father’s irreligion and
licentiousness, to which she joined a violent temper,
drunkenness, gluttony, a contemptuous disregard of
ordinary decency and a most foul tongue.”
In other words, the Duchess was hardly a sympathetic
character. Yet I can’t help feeling sorry for her
because she became so infatuated with one Sicaire Antonin
Armand Auguste Nicolas d’Aydie, the Chevalier
de Rions (aka Rion) that she allowed him to dictate
what she should wear. Even worse, as Stendhal writes
in Love (1818), he did this for kicks:
(Rion) would amuse himself by making her
change her coiffure or her dress at the last minute;
he did this so often and so publicly that
she became accustomed to take his orders in
the evening for what she would do and wear
the following day; then the next day he would
alter everything, and the princess (Duchess de
Berry) would cry all the more. In the end, she
took to sending him messages by trusted footmen,
for from the first he had taken up residence
in the Luxembourg; messages which continued
throughout her toilette, to know what ribbons
she would wear, what gown and what other
ornaments; invariably he made her wear something
she did not wish to.
Choosing your own outfit every day is so important
that the freedom to do so should have been spelled out
in the French Revolution’s Declaration of the Rights
of Man and of the Citizen. This very personal deci-
We don’t know whether Rion spent most of
those 48 hours jumping her bones or rifling
through her closet – for future reference in case
she, too, were to fall under his sartorial spell.
FALL 2016