In the footsteps of Gabrielle: fashions in Paris before the Revolution
By now you know all about the proper attire required from the ladies of the Court. But the same women, hampered by their cumbersome paniers in Versailles, dressed quite differently, and in my opinion more elegantly, in Paris. Let us listen to Gabrielle:
In the capital, the new fashion for ladies was to forego hair powder and to wear straw bonnets and simple dresses of white muslin during the day. This suited my finances very well. Instead of the blue sashes favoured by other women, I would choose bright pink ones, while decorating my hats with matching ribbons to highlight the colour of my hair.
My source here was the Memoirs of Louise-Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun (below, in the black hat) who painted numerous portraits of Marie-Antoinette, and many society ladies.
In particular Madame Lebrun is the author of this beautiful portrait of Louise-Marie de Bourbon-Penthièvre, great-granddaughter of Louis XIV. She was married to the Duke d'Orléans, future Philippe-Egalité.
See how this portrait shows the natural color of the model's hair, instead of the dusty grey of powder.
These white muslin dresses were appropriate as a lady's informal attire. For more formal occasions in Paris, ladies would have dressed like Madame Necker, wife of the Comptroller General of Finances, in the portrait to your right, or as the young woman in the Fragonard painting featured on the cover of Mistress of the Revolution. 
Various colors went in and out of fashion (see below the portrait of the Marquises de Pezay and Rougé, also by Madame Lebrun) but white remained a favorite for women of the upper classes.
So what was the reason for this trend towards simpler female fashions, which would become ever more pronounced during the Revolution?
I believe it had to do with the prevalent taste for simplicity and everything "natural," along the lines of the Queen's hamlet and dairy farm at Trianon.
There might also be another, more prosaic but equally important, reason for the sudden popularity of white fabrics: the discovery in the 1770s by the chemist Claude-Louis Berthollet of l'eau de Javel, chlorine bleach.
The natural bleaching of muslin in sunlight had been an expensive and costly process, but now it could be done quickly and easily thanks to l'eau de Javel.
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Prior posts in the series:
Return to Fontfreyde
Cottage life
Arriving in Paris
Dressing for Court
Discovering Versailles
The presentation to Marie-Antoinette in the Salon of the Nobles
The Royal Chapel
The Queen's Bedchamber
Posted by Catherine Delors at 6/20/2008 12:06 AM and is filed under Marie Antoinette,Paris,18th century,Gabrielle de Montserrat,Mistress of the Revolution 
You have chosen some fabulous portraits.
I think Marie-Antoinette could have worn buckram and looked elegant.
It wasn't the clothes that made the woman it was how they carried themselves.
I never liked the a la turc turban, that is worn by the Marquiss Rouge. They always looked so sac like. It is as if women were wearing a havresac on their heads.
Here ia a site for you., it is from Williamsburg which is right up the road from me.
http://www.history.org/History/teaching/dayInTheLife/webactivities/dress/dress.cfm
Dieu Sauve Le Roy...
Richard
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and another link.
http://www.history.org/history/clothing/intro/clothing.cfm
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Thank you for the link to Williamsburg, Richard. It is must be a great trip and the site is a lot of fun. It makes me feel like a little girl again, dressing and undressing those people.
The choice of the portraits for this post was quite difficult because of the embarrassment of riches. I hesitated whether to include Marie-Antoinette en gaulle, but that portrait is already very well known, and used elsewhere on this blog (and Elena's.) And I wanted to introduce my readers to a few new faces. I think the Duchess d'Orleans was beautiful, with rather sad eyes. It must have been quite a trial to be married to that man. Gouverneur Morris mentions her quite often in his Dairy.
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Thanks for the links, Richard. I will include them in my ebook (when I have mastered the insertion of hyperlinks in PDF, that is.)
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