Customer Reviews

Queen of Fashion: What Marie Antoinette Wore to the Revolution

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This book should definitely be read after one reads Antonia Fraser's "Marie Antoniette: A Journey." This is not a definitive biography, nor does it claim to be. However, it looks at the ill-fated queen in a unique and textual way- through the clothing choices she made at every juncture in her tenure as Dauphine, and later Queen of France.

Weber analyzes everything from color to fabric, hair to corsets in this impeccably researched work. She makes the reader conscious of the UNCONSCIOUS messages we send in our clothing, making one rethink the social consequences of an "I'm with Stupid" T-shirt. Making the satorial social and back again, Weber looks at the way in which Marie Antoniette affected her public and the rebellion she was able to mount without saying a word.

Obviously interest in this book will be high due to the Kirsten Dunst movie. However, this book gave me more of a sympathy for the queen who was thrust into the public eye in France and the decisions made by her and for her. It gave me a different picture of a rebellious queen that I couldn't find in the film. A great read for anyone interested in fashion, Marie Antoniette, and the French Revolution.

In this elegantly written, fast paced book, Caroline Weber shows that Marie Antoinette was not an empty-headed and materialistic teenager, but rather a conscious political actor in the turbulent times of the French Revolution. Boxed and ribboned in the confining world of court fashion and etiquette, Weber entertainingly and authoritatively illustrates how the doomed French queen used the fashion packaging which Louis XIV had created to stifle the aristocrats of his court, turning them from warriors into powdered courtiers, and used it as both an individualistic and politically expressive force. This book not only gives an accurate and nuanced historical account of Marie-Antoinette's relationship with fashion missing from Sofia Coppola's movie, its also a great read!

Marie Antoinette is all the rage. From Sophia Coppola's new movie to a bevy of recent magazine articles, the infamous queen is making headlines. But the spotlight is nothing new for her; people have been interested in her life and activities since she arrived in France as a 14-year-old princess. One such person is Caroline Weber, a French professor teaching at Barnard College, Columbia University who has written a fascinating biography of Marie Antoinette titled QUEEN OF FASHION.

Weber approaches the queen's life story from a totally unique perspective: what Marie Antoinette chose to wear (and what was chosen for her to wear) at various stages in her life. Weber suggests that her fashion choices reflect her attempts to assert her identity and to gain power in a culture where she was expected to be a passive representative of the throne.

Even before she married the future King of France as a young girl, the Austrian Archduchess was told that her looks and appearance were of the utmost importance. She had to undergo a makeover that included extensive, painful dental work and the powdering of her strawberry blond hair, just for marriage negotiations to continue. As she was handed over by the Austrian entourage to the French, she was stripped naked in a room of strangers and redressed in what was considered to be more appropriate (that is, more French) attire. Right away the young woman knew that fashion was what she was expected to be interested in, and she decided to use it to her advantage. She became a figure that challenged propriety, the roles of women and the nobility in her society through the clothing and hairstyles she wore.

Weber convincingly demonstrates how Marie Antoinette, rendered essentially powerless by social and political norms, managed to assert some influence, through her appearance, that extended beyond France's borders. In the beginning the princess (later queen) was adored. French society was enamored of her, and women especially found her refreshing and relatable. The nobility and other traditionalists were less taken by her. However, by the end of her life she was reviled and demonized, accused of sexual misconduct, irresponsible overspending and other corruptions. And, as France found itself heading toward revolution, her foreign birth and foreign ties were impossible for the nation to ignore.

During every stage of her life in France, Marie Antoinette used dress to express herself --- even when she was hated, she was copied. In fact, after her execution by guillotine, the fashion was for women to wear a thin red ribbon tied around their necks. Her choices in fashion were often overtly political, challenging to the social order and always deeply personal. Weber's examination of Marie Antoinette's life through what she wore is engaging, eye-opening and immensely enjoyable.

QUEEN OF FASHION is a truly enlightening and entertaining exploration of history, fashion, gender and power. Weber manages to balance an academic's eye for detail and research with a storyteller's voice for drama, tension and narrative. Marie Antoinette remains, after all this time, a worthy subject for biographers. Weber's contribution is one of the most unique, well-written and recommendable additions to the canon.

--- Reviewed by Sarah Rachel Egelman

This was a wonderfully well-researched and well-written book. Of course, you should realize what you are getting by the title: this is a story of the life of Marie Antoniette that (a) pays special attention to her wardrobe (and what a wardrobe it was, seriously!) and (b) sympathizes with the forces that drove her to her narcissistic pursuit of the latest trends. Don't say this book was tedious because it dealt with all that detail -- of course it did! This is what specialized historiography is all about. It's all a matter of what you want to read about. If you want a general introduction to the life of Marie Antoinette, this book is not for you. But, if you want detailed, well-crafted and intelligently written prose that supports a specific thesis -- that Marie Antoinette's extensive use of wardrobe innovations not only were her bid for the political "credit" she was denied in reality but ironically were perceived as an exercise of that very power and led to her downfall -- then this is an incredibly well-turned-out example of the specialized history genre.

This is not a review of the book itself (which seems well researched. argued, and written), but of the Kindle edition of it. The Kindle edition is unacceptable for academic purposes for the following reasons:

1) The note numbers are not links, and there is no simple way to read the endnotes while reading the text. The only way to do so, is to write down the chapter and note numbers and then go to the endnotes section, page through it until locating to the appropriate note. 2) Same goes for illustration (actually, I am not sure if the illustrations are included at all, I have not been able to find them yet--which means that either they are there, and i cannot find them--a problem; or they are not there and the entire visual argument is missing--even bigger problem). 3) Also, page breaks are not indicated anywhere in the text, again diminishing the usefulness of reading for academic purposes (cannot cite to the page number). 4) Additionally, though index is included, the items in it are not linked to the text but rather display page numbers form the paper version of the book, and since those are unavailable in the kindle edition, this makes the index useless (and, no, searching the text does not substitute for the index)

Overall, I find the Kindle edition of this book unusable and will have to go and get a copy from the library to finish reading it.

"Queen of Fashion" is a stylish and engaging tour de force that offers a truly original perspective on the life of France's ill-fated queen. In her absorbing and rigorously researched account of Marie Antoinette's life, Weber convincingly shows that the history of the queen's wardrobe and the court politics at Versailles are inextricably interwoven threads of French history. The stylish essence of this book is its ability to communicate the complexity of the period's politics with an accessibility and elegance that will appeal to a broad range of readers. A must-read for anyone interested in the history of fashion or France.

Typically I would expect a book about Marie Antoinette and the French Revolution to be pretty dry. This book is extremely well-written and well-researched and frankly I couldn't put it down. The great pictures were also very helpful as I had no idea what some of the more obscure items looked like. If you like sociology, fashion, art or art history, you will enjoy this book.

Queen Marie-Antoinette of France's love of fashion was one of her fatal flaws. This love of fashion and dress-up (or down in her case) has often been commented on in biographies of the Queen. However, this is the first book to chart the reasons behind her apparent fashion madness and how while her enemies derided her for the vast amounts she spent on her wardrobe they were usually the first to copy what she wore.

This book concentrates on what Marie-Antoinette wore from the time she left Austria till her death at the guillotine. It has a picture section in the middle that shows some of the outfits talked about in the text - but the images of Marie- Antoinette could easily fill another book as subject to itself (one which I'm surprised hasn't been tackled in English before this).

If you have an interest in 18th century French costume this is a book worth picking up for a read as it charts the costume excesses of the last quarter of the 18th century in good detail. It's also a minor biography of the Queen in itself. While this book fills out the background to the downfall of the Queen its not a real substitute for a well written formal biography. The real moral of this book is that a great fashion sense is no real substitute for genuine Power

This enlightening book is a wonderfully fresh look at the life of Marie Antoinette. Caroline Weber with her impeccable attention to the finest detail is able to offer us a different angle , how Marie Antoinettes choices in fashion made an impact on her life and how those choices often had a direct link to the events which were unfolding .
If you are looking for a book which details the life of Marie Antoinette, I would still recommend Lady Antonia Frasers ' The Journey' , but if you have read ' The Journey ' and want a book , equally as good, but with a different spin and plenty of research I would heartily recommend this fabulous book.

I am glad that Carrie Weber's fascinating book "Queen of Fashion" is making a headway into American and Canadian popular culture to counteract some of the false information that will undoubtedly be generated by the Coppola film. No, Marie-Antoinette was not an empty-headed teenage spendthrift just trying to have fun. There was a method to her "madness." In spite of her joie-de-vivre, she was a Habsburg, and the Habsburgs always knew how to wield power. Weber, through anecdotes and vivid descriptions shows how the ill-fated queen used costume throughout her life to make a statement, which ultimately shaped her destiny. She dressed stylishly as only former courtesans had dressed to show that she and no other was her husband's mistress. An excellent book!