Marie Antoinette, Fashion Icon: Background information when reading Liberty Equality Fashion

In 1783, Marie Antoinette made a terrible faux pas—she dressed like a commoner. Painted by her favorite portraitist, Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun, the queen was depicted in a loose cotton dress, comfortably tied at the waist with no corset. Although one may think this would have endeared her to the citizenry, it only served to scandalize the society that had come to see her as the pinnacle of luxury fashion. As Nancy Goldstone describes in In the Shadow of the Empress, "Nothing sells like high-end celebrity, and the more flagrantly grandiose Marie Antoinette's style, the more she became an object of public fascination."

Early in her reign, Marie Antoinette became famous for her extravagant dresses and elaborate hairdos, including the white wigs we so often associate with the palace of Versailles. She also became infamous for the amount she spent on clothes and jewels, convincing her husband, King Louis XVI, to spend lavish sums on diamonds and ignoring the advice ...