Liberty Equality Fashion
The Women Who Styled the French Revolution
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5.0 • 3 Ratings
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- $30.99
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- $30.99
Publisher Description
Shortlisted for the Eighth Annual French Heritage Society Book Award
Three women led a fashion revolution and turned themselves into international style celebrities.
Joséphine Bonaparte, future Empress of France; Térézia Tallien, the most beautiful woman in Europe; and Juliette Récamier, muse of intellectuals, had nothing left to lose. After surviving incarceration and forced incestuous marriage during the worst violence of the French Revolution of 1789, they dared sartorial revolt. Together, Joséphine and Térézia shed the underwear cages and massive, rigid garments that women had been obliged to wear for centuries. They slipped into light, mobile dresses, cropped their hair short, wrapped themselves in shawls, and championed the handbag. Juliette made the new style stand for individual liberty.
The erotic audacity of these fashion revolutionaries conquered Europe, starting with Napoleon. Everywhere a fashion magazine could reach, women imitated the news coming from Paris. It was the fastest and most total change in clothing history. Two centuries ahead of its time, it was rolled back after only a decade by misogynist rumors of obscene extravagance.
New evidence allows the real fashion revolution to be told. This is a story for our time: of a revolution that demanded universal human rights, of self-creation, of women empowering each other, and of transcendent glamor
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Three women who "decapitate aristocratic style" in revolutionary France take center stage in this impressive account from Barnard art history professor Higonnet (Berthe Morisot). Tracing how from 1789 to 1804 these "three graces" (so-called at the time for their stylishness) eschewed restrictive, elaborate garments in favor of simple, straight, unstructured dresses, Higonnet contends that this style shift was a bold expression of revolutionary freedom. The most well-known "grace," Marie Joséphine Rose Tascher de La Pagerie (later Joséphine Bonaparte, wife of Napoleon), drew fashion inspiration from women of color in Martinique, where she grew up, and broke "barriers in women's clothing history" that were "five hundred years old" by wearing one-piece dresses in lieu of the two-piece combo of skirt and bodice. Also profiled are Térézia Tallien, who used the seductive power of clothing to ensnare powerful men and finagle for herself "unprecedented celebrity" and power in the Directory era (she was a key architect behind the overthrow of Robespierre), and Juliette Récamier, who "trademarked absolute whiteness" as a symbol of virginity after a marriage to her rumored biological father made it necessary for her to prove they weren't actually sleeping together. As rigorous as it is fun, Higonnet's narrative takes many insightful detours, from close readings of the era's paintings to an overview of how colonial trade transformed France's economy. It's a captivating case study of fashion's provocative role in politics.
