Book Review: Fifty Dresses that Changed the World

Given my fascination for dresses, it probably comes as no surprise that I could not resist buying this book which is one in a series published by the Design Museum. Others include Shoes, Cars, Chairs etcetera. And while it hardly seems likely that any object would change the world, it does provide a compact survey of 50 dresses that impacted contemporary fashion design from 1915 forward. Some of the dresses on the list of top fifty are: The Goddess Dress by Madame Vionnet (1931), Chanel's Jersey Flapper Dress (1926), YSL's Mondrian dress (1965), the Paper dress (1966), Vivienne Westwood's Mini-Crini (1985), Versace's Safety-pin dres (1994)...

If I had written this book, I would have gone back to around 1778-1779, when Marie Antoinette stepped out of her enormous paniers and adopted the milk-maid look with polonaise a deux fins or pleated caraco and apron of linon a fleurs. And who can argue against the revolutionary impact of Marie Antoinette wearing the lightweight chemise dress known as the gaulle. The outcry from  Elizabeth Vigee-Lebrun's portrait of the queen wearing this "undignified" and "indecent" gown was vitriolic. But obviously that wasn't the mandate of this particular book.

In any case, reading this book did set off a light-bulb for me when I read about Hussein Chalayan's Buried Dress collection of 1993.  In this collection for his graduation show at Central St. Martins College of Art and Design, he buried the garments in his back garden and left them to decompose. The results were not pretty but caused a fashion sensation and established him as a pioneer in the world of fashion. After I finish documenting my mother's dress collection, I may use this concept as a stepping stone for a process driven conceptual project with her dresses. That alone made the book worth the cover price.

Title: Fifty Dresses that Changed the World
Published by: Conran Octopus Ltd. 2009
Category: Non-fiction, fashion
Number of Pages: 112
Price: US$20, Canada $26, UK 12.99

Portraits of Marie Antoinette

Portrait of the Archduchess Marie Antoinette by Martin van Meytens the Younger, 1767-1768 (Schonbrunn Castle, Vienna)

In the many portraits of Marie Antoinette, she is portrayed with smooth, white skin, blonde hair, pretty blue eyes, a high forehead, and an aqualine nose. In the Portrait of the Archduchess Marie Antoinette by Martin van Meytens the Younger shown above, painted before she left for the French court, she seems to be perfection personified.

In spite of this lovely image, it's been said that Marie Antoinette was not considered especially beautiful. Apparently, her "Habsburg jaw and prominent nose were a bit heavy for eighteenth-century taste" (Source: "The Art of Dress" by Aileen Riberio, Yale University Press, 1995). As well, there are few images of MA in profile because she was self-conscious about her aqualine nose.

In the letters between Marie Antoinette and her mother (1770-1780), she makes several references to the portraits being painted of her and that she does not think they have achieved a proper likeness. Here are two extracts from her letters to her mother:

Marie Antoinette to Maria Theresa, 13 August 1773
"I am being painted, right now; it is true that no painter has yet caught the way I look: I would happily give all I own to anyone who could express in a portrait all the joy I would feel in seeing my dear Mama; how hard it is to be able to kiss her only by letter." (page 117).

Marie Antoinette to Marie Theresa, 16 November 1774
"The painters kill me and make me despair. I delayed the courier so as to allow my portrait to be finished; it has just been brought to me; it looks so little like me that I cannot send it. I hope to have a good one next month." (page 155)

(Source: Secrets of Marie Antoinette by Olivier Bernier, 1985)

As an artist, I know how difficult it is to achieve a likeness when painting a portrait. And even if all the features are precisely in place, considerable skill is required to capture the spirit of the sitter and translate that onto canvas. I wonder if the portrait artists mentioned in Marie Antoinette's letters failed to flatter her sufficiently to win her approval or were lacking in sufficient skill to capture her likeness.

After her mother's death, Marie Antoinette sat for several portraits with Elisabeth-Louise Vigee Le Brun. One of her portraits of Queen Marie Antoinette was exhibited at the Salon of 1783 and depicted the Queen wearing a chemise gown causing tremendous controversy. The portrait was withdrawn. To read more about Madame Vigee Le Brun, please refer to my earlier posting on the subject.

Queen Marie-Antoinette by E.L. Vigee-Lebrun, 1783, National Gallery of Art, Washington

I'd hazard a guess that Marie Antoinette would not have liked the contemporary portraits of her painted by Elizabeth Peyton.

Empress Eugenie and Marie Antoinette

Portrait of the Empress Eugenie dressed as Marie Antoinette by Franz Xaver Winterhaller, 1854, oil on canvas (the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City)

The Empress Eugenie collected objects and memorabilia associated with Marie Antoinette and housed them in the Petit Trianon in Versailles. Her fascination with the Queen extended to dressing like her as evidenced by this 1854 portrait by Franz Xaver Winterhalter. The Empress stands in a garden of lilacs, wearing a deep yellow taffeta gown trimmed with black bows and blue ribbons, rope of pearls, fringes and tassels in the Rococo Revival style. Her hair had been powdered white and adorned with ribbons and a feather ornament. This painting has been compared to the 1787 painting of Queen Marie Antoinette in the Park at Versailles by Adolph-Ulrich Wertmuller.

On another occasion in 1866, Eugenie attended a ball wearing a gown copied from a portrait of Marie Antoinette painted by Elizabeth Louise Vigee Le Brun in 1787. After the ball, it was written "...An empress of others, not the French, perhaps of some fairy place such as Baden. If you wish, Marie Antoinette at the Mabille."

Marie Antoinette Painted by Elizabeth Peyton

I was in New York on the weekend and did a fair share of gallery hopping including a retrospective of Elizabeth Peyton's work at the New Museum of Contemporary Art. "The Live Forever: Elizabeth Peyton" show, sponsored by Banana Republic, features about 100 of her intimate portraits of friends, family and figures from the worlds of art, fashion and politics.

I knew that she painted rock stars but I wasn't aware that she was also fascinated by royalty. What a lucky coincidence for me to discover two paintings of Marie Antoinette painted by Elizabeth Peyton.
This small 8x6 inch oil painting by Elizabeth Peyton from 1995 is called "Marie Antoinette between Germany and France on her Way to be Married".


This oil painting of Marie Antoinette by Elizabeth Peyton from 1994 is titled "Marie after Vigee LeBrun".

I have always admired Elizabeth Peyton's loose, emotive style and had bought a book called "Elizabeth Peyton" (Rizzoli, New York, 2005) several years ago. Not having seen any of her work except in the book, I had the mistaken impression that Peyton's portraits would be on huge canvases and at the show I was surprised to see the small, intimate size of her paintings.

It inspired me to try Peyton's free and loose style of brushwork and I dashed off a painting based on photos of Anne Hathaway dressed as "Queen Anne" in W Magazine last month.

I would recommend a visit to the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York to see the show of Elizabeth Peyton's work which spans two floors. The show is on until January 11, 2009. But if you cannot go in person, I recommend buying the book "Elizabeth Peyton". It is definitely the next best thing to being there.

New Museum of Contemporary Art
235 Bower at Prince Street, New York City, USA
212-219-1222

Marie Antoinette and her Portraitist, Elisabeth-Louise Vigee Le Brun

This portrait of Marie Antoinette, entitled La Reine en Gaulle (The Queen dressed in a Gaulle), caused a scandal when it was shown at the Paris artist's salon of 1783. The traditional accoutrements of royal portraiture - the grand habit de cour, the royal jewels, and the heavily powdered hairstyle - were absent. Marie Antoinette was portrayed in a white muslin dress and the reaction to this break in tradition and convention was vociferous.

Critics and the public thought that Marie Antoinette was "wearing a chamber-maid's dust cloth". Generally it was thought that the Queen violated "the fundamental law of this kingdom, that the public cannot suffer to see its princes lower themselves to the level of mere mortals (Mademoiselle de Mirecourt)."

The painting was withdrawn from the salon and replaced with another, hastily executed painting called La Reine a la Rose. The substituted painting showed the Queen in more a traditional blue-gray silk robe a la francaise and pearl jewels. Unfortunately the damage had already been done by the first portrait of the queen "dressed up like a serving girl" and fueled further speculation about the Queen's respect for the throne and her loyalty to France.

Elisabeth Louise Vigee Le Brun, the Queen's portraitist, preferred to dress her sitters in more natural styles of dress. In her published memoirs, she recounts how she gained the trust of her models in order to allow her "to dress them after my fancy" aiming for the beautiful drapery of Raphael and Domenichino. She also wrote that she "detested the powdering of hair" and how she convinced the Duchesse de Gramont-Caderouusse not to put powder in her beautiful black hair when she sat for her portrait.

Le Brun painted many self-portraits and her affinity for simple gowns and unpowdered hair is evident in how she portrays herself. This self-portrait completed in 1781 (two years prior to the salon fiasco), Le Brun wears a white muslin gown, adorned only with a coral-coloured bow, and styles her hair simply without powder.

Le Brun's influence on French fashion was substantial. Le Brun was considered to be "one of the major painters at the epicentre of art and fashion" of the time and that "perhaps more than any single individual in the last quarter of the eighteenth century, Vigee Le Brun influenced the development of women's costume" with her preference for "a more natural look". (Memoires secrets pour servir a l'histroire de la republique 1777-89, vol. 16, pg. 226).