(Surprise Edition!) How Marie Antoinette Impacted Fashion...After She Died

It’s (still) Day 16 of my Spring Challenge!

As a reminder, this challenge means that either you get an email in your inbox 5 times per week until May 31st (which means I get a set of luxurious, vintage jammies) OR I have to donate $5 to a charity I hate for every week that I miss the goal.

(Bonus Round!) Origins of RegencyCore

Two issues in one day?? How is this possible???

Everything is possible when you have a long list of fun fashion factoids, a newsletter edition that was getting too long - and when you haven’t slept.

SO: We’ve seen the Regency fashions by now: high waists, column skirts, yada yada yada.

BUT! Where did the design originate from?

Amazingly enough: the “Spendthrift” Queen herself: Marie Antoinette.

While Marie Antoinette is held up as the spokesmodel for bad financial planning (a bad combination of sexism, racism, and politics at play), she actually preferred simpler living. This included her clothes!

Used to the more easy-going Austrian court of her youth, Marie had difficulty adapting to the strict rules at the court of Versailles. In rebellion, she created the chemise à la reine, a dress made up of simple layers of muslin tied with a sash.

The dress immediately caused a scandal. “It looks too much like lingerie! It’s made of England-imported muslin, not French silk! It doesn’t show off the grandeur of the French court!”

Marie Antoinette ultimately bowed to pressure and quit wearing the design in anything except her most private moments. But patterns of the dress had already begun to circulate amongst her friends, who began making their own versions.

Then, the French Revolution hit. And as we already know, peasants and aristocrat fashion went back to basics…without giving credit to the originator herself.

Now, we’ve explored parts of Europe (and mentioned America, fiiiine) - but fashion isn’t made within one continent.

So let’s hop across a few more seas in the next edition to hear about some truly global changes. Stay tuned!

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xoxo,

Simran