Blues and whites

They're my favourite two colours together. Elena Maria Vidal's blog Tea at Trianon shows some of Marie-Antoinette's favourite combinations.

Modern Royal couture

Via Tea at Trianon comes an article about this magnificent gown by Norman Hartnell, which was worn by the current Queen on a State visit to Paris in 1957.

The Surviving Jewels of Marie-Antoinette

Via Tea at Trianon comes an article about the few surviving fragments of Marie-Antoinette's legendary jewel collection.

For this blog's post on the fashion preferences of the Queen, click HERE.

Marie-Antoinette's ballgown re-created

Via Tea at Trianon comes news of this Italian recreation of one of the gown's made for Queen Marie-Antoinette by her so-called "minister of fashion," Madame Rose Bertin, who was credited in the September 2006 edition of American Vogue with basically creating the concept of haute couture. The gown (above) was worn by the young queen during her period as the acknowledged leader of French high society in the 1770s. For a look at Marie-Antoinette's fashion sense, click here.

"Popular" character profile: Catherine

Over at my book blog, I have started profiling in-depth the main characters of Popular, my first novel which will be released in the UK on July 7th, 2011.

The first character to be profiled is nice but dim popular girl, Catherine O'Rourke, the 16 year-old daughter of a local property developer, who is still desperate to cling onto her position in the school's elite.

You can read all the details about Catherine here.

October 16th, 1793: The Execution of Marie-Antoinette

"I was a queen, and you took away my crown; a wife, and you killed my husband; a mother, and you deprived me of my children. My blood alone remains: take it, but do not make me suffer long."

Lancelot de Carles and the Portuguese author of the Alcobaca account said that when Death came for Anne Boleyn in 1536, she was still at the height of her beauty. The glossy brunette tresses were immaculately coiffed; the glistening dark eyes, the long, elegant fingers, the trim waist and the smooth skin were all still intact in the waif-like 28 year-old. Her jailers had treated her with respect – bowing as they entered her presence; the Constable of the Tower even stammered over his words in informing the Queen that the time had now come to die. It was left to Anne to offer soothing words of polite comfort to her gaoler, rather than the other way round. On the scaffold, thousands had knelt before a woman who was still young, still glamorous and still beautiful.

When they came for Catherine Howard in 1542, the teenage Queen still radiated that potent mixture of vulnerability and sexuality which had made her so lethally attractive to men. When they came for Jane Grey in 1554, she was dressed demurely in black – still the perfect, prim, Protestant porcelain doll, her eyes aglow with quiet ecstasy at the prospect of being martyred for her faith. When they came for the Romanov Grand Duchesses in 1918, they were all young, all pretty; their ages ranged from twenty-two to seventeen. Olga, Tatiana, Maria and Anastasia were still recognisably the iconic princesses who had stared out from hundreds of photographs celebrating the domestic bliss of Russia’s last Imperial Family.

But when they came for Marie-Antoinette in 1793, France’s most iconic queen was no longer beautiful or even pretty. Rather, she was in every way – apart from the curious beauty endowed by dignity – positively and undeniably ugly. The sufferings she had endured over the last four years and especially in the last thirteen months had destroyed what remained of her good-looks. As the poor woman sat writing her last letter between the two fat wax candles in the grim, cold and dank prison cell at the Conciergerie in the pre-dawn darkness of October 16th 1793, anyone hoping to see the one-time goddess of ancien régime sophistication would have been cruelly disappointed. The trim waist which had once been encased in Rose Bertin’s legendary creations of haute couture had thickened and coarsened; the beautiful fair hair which the celebrity coiffeur, Monsieur Léonard, had once styled into everything from towering poufs decorated with diamonds, jewels, powder and feathers, to simple chignons inspired by country-maids, was long gone. The Queen’s hair had turned entirely grey over the last year and it had even begun to fall out. That skin – the ivory-white smoothness of which had once caused her aristocratic contemporaries to fall into raptures of both praise and jealousy – was no longer alabaster, but rather emaciated, almost ghostly. The skin had begun to sag as well, around her chin, neck, cheeks and eyes, in particular. The sparkling blue eyes, shared by so many of the Queen’s Hapsburg relatives, had dimmed and clouded over, as the days and weeks spent in a darkened prison cell ruined her eyesight. She was thirty-seven years-old.

In the last forty-eight hours, the Queen had eaten almost nothing and her body was now rapidly beginning to fall apart, as if it too sensed that the end was near and that there was no point in holding itself together any longer. The Queen’s monthly period had started a few days earlier, but it had quickly degenerated into a frightening case of vaginal hemorrhaging. She had to constantly change her menstrual linens and trying to find the time to do so discreetly, when she was apt to be interrupted by the revolutionary guards at any given moment, was difficult. For a woman who was always so protective over her privacy and mortified by nudity, it was particularly humiliating set of circumstances.

Fit for a Queen

The blog Marie Antoinette's Gossip Guide to the 18th Century is hosting a rather fun video, celebrating the legendary wardrobe of the last Queen of France and her contemporaries.

The dress above is one of the cumbersome but magnificent gowns required by Versailles etiquette to be worn by the great ladies of the Court on formal occasions of State. Marie-Antoinette was not a fan of this particular style of dress, but she made the best of it by employing the talents of her famed dress-maker, stylist and so-called "Minister of Fashion," Madame Rose Bertin, who American Vogue credited with inventing the entire concept of haute couture in their September 2006 issue.

The personal style of Marie-Antoinette and her confidantes is something often misrepresented. Like earlier queens, such as Anne Boleyn and Henrietta-Maria, Marie-Antoinette was genuinely interested in fashion for fashion's sake - she enjoyed the touch and sight of gorgeous fabrics and daring, fashion-forward gowns. Unlike other sovereigns, such as Elizabeth I or Louis XIV, the Queen did not enjoy dressing for the sake of grandeur or political display. Her decision, in the 1780s, to patronise the movement for simpler, elegant lawn dresses was one of her more controversial, but is also indicates that the Queen preferred style to splendour and innovation to tradition when it came to fashion.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, given her own obsession with fashion and her appreciation of the power of aesthetics, Marie-Antoinette's set was known for being a fairly fashionable one. Her brother-in-law, the Comte d'Artois, was generally considered to be the best-dressed man in France, while several of the Queen's ladies-in-waiting were praised for their sense of style - the imperious but entertaining Princesse d'Hénin, a friend of the Comte d'Artois', had a preference for sophisticated and generally fairly conservative cuts in clothing; the pretty Thérèse-Lucy de Dillon, married to the Governor of Tobago and chatelaine of a beautiful townhouse on the rue du Bac, generally followed where the Queen led, but her love of the latest fashion and complimentary, highly-feminine styles were commented upon with approval by many of the courtiers at Versailles.

Amongst the Queen's extended circle, perhaps the most adventurous dresser was Victoire, the Princesse de Guéménée, wife of one of the highest-ranking aristocrats in the kingdom and related by blood to another of the nation's "first families." Victoire was noted for the general fabulousness of her lifestyle, her extravagant parties, her sophisticated manners, her luxurious homes, her gambling addiction, her financial recklessness, her love for her pet dogs and her dazzlingly decadent dress-sense. Madame de Guéménée dressed in the most lavish and ostentatious style, which so many of us associate in our heads with the last days of the ancien régime in France. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Madame and her husband were the only French aristocrats in the entire century who actually faced bankruptcy - a financial scandal which rocked the nobility and titillated the gossips of Paris and Versailles for months to come. The Queen, who was not particularly close to Madame but enjoyed her parties, arranged for a loan to be given to the couple to spare them the humiliation of debtors' prison, but the Guéménées were still forced to quit the capital for awhile, in order to live-down the disgrace of their bankruptcy.

Perhaps the keenest of the Versailles fashionistas, after the Queen herself, was her friend and Superintendent of her Household, the Princesse de Lamballe. A pretty society widow, the Princesse was not only one of the highest-ranking women in France as a Princess of the Blood, but also one of its wealthiest, thanks to the enormous fortune she had inherited when her young but immoral husband died at the age of twenty from advanced syphilis, leaving her everything but an infection. Mercifully, Madame de Lamballe had avoided contracting venereal disease, since her husband had quit his wife's bed for that of a dancer, Mademoiselle Chassaign, shortly after the wedding. That the Lamballe marriage had been abusive had long been whispered in the corridors of Versailles and with the inheritance received from her husband, it was cruelly (but accurately) reported that the prince had given his wife far greater pleasure in death than he ever had in life. Deeply religious, morally upstanding, highly sentimental, emotional and lady-like, Madame de Lamballe showed no wish to re-marry and instead used her vast fortune to give generously to her favourite charities and to maintain an extravagant yet elegant life as one of the French aristocracy's premier socialites. She kept two large homes - her town-house of the Hôtel de Toulouse (where the recent film Marie-Antoinette starring Kirsten Dunst was partially filmed; Madame's home was used to film the scenes of Marie-Antoinette's youth in Vienna) and her beautiful country house of the Château de Rambouillet (above left.)

Mortifying mistake on "Australia's Next Top Model"

From my other blog - an embarrassing mistake on the live finale of Australia's Next Top Model. 

"In a true democracy, everyone can be upper class and live in Connecticut": Has the Preppy Era gone too far?

Thirty years after the publication of Lisa Birnbach's The Official Preppy Handbook, Eric Felten wonders if the culture of preppiness has actually been harmful to America's middle- and upper-classes? I think he may be overstating the case slightly, but it's well-written and it does point out that what was perhaps intended as satire suddenly became a bible for those who wish their lives were like something out of a Cecily von Ziegesar novel.

Via Tea at Trianon, to quote: -

The clothes may have been the most visible part of the preppy phenomenon, but they represented only a small part of the upper-class way of life Ms. Birnbach was championing (however cheerfully sly and subversive her advocacy may have been). Much of the book was devoted to a world-view that was casually aristocratic. Ms. Birnbach promised to make that outlook available to one and all. "In a true democracy," she wrote, "everyone can be upper class and live in Connecticut."

How could the suburban teenager from Peoria or Pomona all of sudden be "upper class"? It was less a matter of pink oxford cloth and Kelly-green poplin than of adopting an aristocratic lassitude, an attitude that exuded privilege by treating effort with contempt. One simply mustn't try too hard. A key principle of what Ms. Birnbach called the Preppy Value System was Effortlessness: "If life is a country club, then all functions should be free from strain."

There's no denying the seductive appeal of the old aristocratic disdain for those who strive. How much nicer (and, of course, easier) it is to adopt a blasé and boozy contempt for the grinds and geeks who put in effort than it is to compete with them. The original Handbook warned acolytes not to waste their college days studying "Professional majors" such as engineering, chemistry or mathematics, because they "all reek of practicality." Nor, we were told, did the preppy go for intellectually demanding subjects such as philosophy or linguistics because, "they smack of an equally undesirable effort."

And there's the rub. Unless you actually have a fat trust fund to underwrite your nonchalance, an aversion to effort is hardly a strategy for success. Which may explain some of our national woes.

"Elvis, Chatsworth, JFK and Me:" An Interview with Deborah Mitford

In light of the release of her memoirs, Wait for Me!, The Daily Telegraph writes a wonderful and very entertaining profile of Deborah Mitford, Dowager Duchess of Devonshire. There are certain quotes in the article, which remind me why I find the Mitfords' style so inimitably delicious and hilarious. There are also moments of great triumph in diversity, downplayed in a very old "stiff upper lip" kind of way - the quarter of a century it took her and her husband to pay of the Death Tax levied upon them, the deaths of three of her children and the Duke's battle with alcoholism.

***

Debo, as everyone calls her, was 90 this year. Having greeted me in her pretty garden, shaking my hand and looking me directly in the eye, she leads me into the apple-green-walled and flagstone-floored hall – 'Do put your bags down, no burglars here' – and shows me into her sitting-room, which has an extraordinarily nice atmosphere, and we take to the floral sofa, where she positively lounges, looking at me brightly, waiting to be amused.

There have been countless books about the Mitfords, both biographical and autobiographical, and now her own memoirs, Wait for Me!, are about to be published. (She has written several books, mostly about Chatsworth, her former home.)

James II's wedding suit

Via Tea at Trianon comes an account of the sumptuous wedding suit worn by the future King James II when he married his second bride, the lovely Italian princess, Maria-Beatrice of Modena, in 1673. The suit, shown above, is still preserved and on display in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

James's time as King in Britain was short, lasting only from 1685 until he was deposed in 1688. He and Maria-Beatrice were to spend the rest of their lives in exile, as guests of the French Royal Family, with Maria becoming an important figure in Court life at the recently-completed palace of Versailles, where she was much admired.

James, then Duke of York, had been married before, to the late Lady Anne Hyde, who had lost her battle to cancer two years earlier. With Anne, James had fathered eight children, although only two survived - the future queens, Mary II and Anne. With the beautiful Maria (or, to give her her full name, Maria-Beatrice-Eleanora-Anna-Margareta-Isabella d'Este of Modena), James was to have a further seven children - Catherine-Laura (died at the age of ten months), Isabella (died aged five), Charles, Duke of Cambridge (died as a baby during the smallpox epidemic of 1677), Elizabeth (died a few weeks after her christening), Charlotte-Maria (died of a possible allergy at the age of three months), James Francis Edward, regarded as "King James III" by his father's supporters and "the Old Pretender" by those who supported James II's exile (1688 - 1766) and Princess Louisa-Maria (1692 - 1712), who was born during the royal couple's exile in France.

The couple and their surviving children lived out most of their exile in the magnificent château of St. Germain-en-Laye (below), a gift to them from King James's cousin, Louis XIV. James II died there in the autumn of 1701 and he was originally buried in the Chapel of Saint Edmund in the Church of the English Benedictines on the Rue St Jacques in Paris. James was followed to the grave eleven years later by his daughter, the unmarried Princess Louisa-Maria, who died at St.-Germain at the age of nineteen in the spring of 1712, to her mother's great distress. The princess's body was taken to the Church of the English Benedictines, to rest alongside her late father's. Queen Maria-Beatrice died six years later in the early summer of 1718, after an agonising battle with cancer. She was buried in the Abbey of the Visitation of Saint Mary at Chaillot. The bodies of King James, Queen Maria-Beatrice and Princess Louisa-Maria were all destroyed during the French Revolution.

After a failed attempt to retake the British thrones in 1715, James-Francis re-settled in Rome, where he married Princess Maria-Casimira of Poland and fathered two sons - including the future "Bonnie Prince Charlie" of legend. James-Francis or, "James III and VIII" as his most loyal adherents had known him, passed away as a guest of the Papacy on New Year's Day 1766 and he was granted the honour of being buried in Saint Peter's Basilica.


Today, James II and Maria-Beatrice of Modena have no mutual living descendants. All of their children, bar James-Francis, died before they could reproduce and of James-Francis's two children - "Bonnie" Charles-Edward's marriage to Princess Louisa-Maximiliana von Stolberg-Gedern was barren and his younger brother, Henry-Benedict, entered the Roman Catholic Church and became Cardinal of Santa Maria.