• Title: Queen of Fashion
• Author: Caroline Weber
• Publisher: Picador
• Year of Publication: 2006
• Pages: 292 (with notes, 372)

As my book review on French Milk gives some indication, I’m a bit of a Francophile. It all started sometime around the opening of Sophia Coppola’s film Marie Antoinette (2006), inspired by Antonia Fraser’s biography Marie Antoinette: The Journey (2001). I loved the film, and my interest in Marie Antoinette intensified when I visited Versailles in the summer of 2007.

There is something about monarchies that I find absolutely enchanting: the history, the genealogy, the societal pressures, the mores, the architecture of their abodes, the luxury. This extends even to the British monarchy. I am also mesmerized by anything about Queen Elizabeth I and the rest of the Tudors. (This interest was cultivated long before my interest in Marie Antoinette.)

Perhaps my interest in these infamous queens has something to do with the fact that so much was expected of them and yet they faced great obstacles in achieving anything because they were women of their time.

Caroline Weber’s fantastic biography of Marie Antoinette, Queen of Fashion, approaches the subject in a refreshing way. Pointing out the intentional and unintentional symbolism in the styles and colors of the clothing the French queen chose to wear provided another dimension to the story of her life. In the introduction Weber provides, she explains that this biography was meant to fill in the gaps that other biographers left out. Since clothing was such an integral part of Marie Antoinette’s life, to tell her story without a detailed account of what she wore and why ignored an entire facet of her existence.

Weber doesn’t just talk about the clothes Marie Antoinette wore, but also her life, the trends of the day, her influence on French style, the symbolism of the clothes her countrymen wore in revolt, and the French Revolution’s influence on fashion.

All in all, I felt even more sympathy for Marie Antoinette as a human being after reading this book. The first time I ever heard of her, likely in elementary school, was of her allegedly saying “Let them eat cake!” in response to news of starvation, extreme poverty, and famine in France. (That was discovered to be a false accusation.) This book and the aforementioned movie paint pictures of a Marie Antoinette who was not perfect, but certainly did not deserve to be maltreated and executed. They illustrate a complex and nuanced view of the life she led, and how much she really was a victim of circumstance. 5/5