What is a chemise à la reine, anyway?
Originally published at Historical Personality Disorder. Please leave any comments there.
Rest assured, the chemise à la reine is never far from my mind. I’m finishing up the second draft of my thesis, so there’s that. But there’s also the fact that I’m going back to Manchester in May to have a second study date with the Platt Hall chemise gown, in preparation for a detailed article I intend to write in the next year. And, of course, Costume College: My class on the chemise à la reine was accepted, so put that down on your schedule!
With all this swirling around in my brain, I think it’s high time I talked about what I consider a chemise gown. For the purposes of my research, I pulled together from both written and visual sources in French and English, a timeline of the chemise à la reine and its offshoots, between 1780 and 1793-ish. These dozen or so years are divided into two parts: 1780-1786 and post-1786. My thesis is focused on the first 6 years of chemise, and not so much the last 6 years, mainly because I’m trying to answer the question of just where the heck this style came from (hint: I have a theory, but I’m not going to go into it here quite yet).
There’s a source from Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun’s memoire that alludes to Marie-Antoinette having worn a white muslin gown amongst her intimate friends, while at Marly, in the mid-1770s, but the verbal description is vague and Vigée-Lebrun was writing about it decades after the encounter. The style doesn’t enter the fashionable consciousness until the early 1780s, however, when Vigee-Lebrun’s portraits of the Madame du Barry, the Comtesse de Moreton, and of course, Marie-Antoinette, crop up in short succession.
Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun, Madame du Barry, 1781.
Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun, La Comtesse de Moreton, 1782.
Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun, Marie-Antoinette en chemise, 1783.
Those of you paying attention to the dates of the images above will note that the earliest portrait of the chemise gown is that of du Barry in 1781, followed by the comtesse Moreton in 1782, and finally, in 1783, Marie-Antoinette’s notorious portrait. There’s no question in written accounts that the queen was recognized as an early-adopted of the dress, but she held off having herself painted wearing it for far longer than the eager-to-impress du Barry. The question of why Marie-Antoinette chose to be painted wearing the chemise gown in Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun’s submission to the Salon of Paris in 1783 is a discussion for another entry. But trust me, it’s a good one.
Anyway, back to the question at hand. The 1780-1786 chemise styled gown is essentially that, a chemise. All of these examples, including the Manchester Gallery chemise gown, are entirely unstructured tubes of lightweight muslin, with the only shaping provided through drawstrings at the neck, waist, and/or a sash. The sleeves have either no gathering points, or two or three, and end either at the elbow or wrist. Essentially, this entire gown is virtually indistinguishable from an undergarment, but for the fact that it was worn over a lightweight pair of stays and a petticoat.
Post-1784, the chemise gown starts to evolve and acquires the “à la reine” association. There are more variations in styles from this point, and it is commonly seen repeated throughout the next several years in various iterations, such as the chemise à la reine (named after Marie-Antoinette, obviously), and the chemise à la Guimard (probably named after Madame Guimard, a famous ballerina and apparently one of Marie-Antoinette’s favorites). The same basic shape is present, but there is a wider variety of fabrics (dotted swiss, embroideries, linen) and at least in the fashion plates, colors other than white.
Chemise à la reine, 1784
Chemise à la Jesus, c.1785-1787
Robe en chemise, c. 1785-1786
While colored chemise gowns are shown in fashion plates between the years 1784-1786, colored chemise gowns are not seen in portraits. This is one of those interesting dichotomies between fashion plates, portraiture, and extant garments. The argument could be made that colorized plates are more interesting and engaging for the viewer, but then it could also be argued that colored chemises were a real thing and the fashion plate artists were simply documenting them. Although, I will say, it is definitely not the first time a fashion magazine represented clothing that was never actually worn by anyone (I’m looking at you, Vogue).
Color, however, shows up in the off-shoots of the chemise gown, in the late-80s. These are gowns that bear some of the hallmarks of the chemise à la reine, such as gathered bodice fronts, but have fitted bodice backs. A couple of years ago, myself and many other costumers were calling this style the “gaulle,” however, I’ve come to the conclusion that that name is a misnomer. Gaulle, it appears, was an alternate term for the chemise gown far earlier than these later styles existed. In the memoires judiciares, published in 1786, but regarding the affair of the necklace that took place in 1784- Nicole le Guay, the prostitute hired to portray Marie-Antoinette for the purpose of duping the Cardinal de Rohan, describes the outfit she was made to wear as “a robe à l’enfant, or a gaule [sic], a sort of garment most often known as the chemise.“ (Italics are mine)
As for what to call this style of gown, well, more research is needed. The English & Americans seemed to favor the generic term “open gown” when describing it.
Peach-colored Open Robe and Matching Petticoat, United States of America, North Carolina, 1785
Costume Collection University of North Carolina at Greensboro
Note: I have a small quibble with the 1785 date of the above gown. I think it’s actually later… In fact, I find it eerily similar to the gown Mary Hawkworth Riddle wears in the portrait below, dated 1791.
Charles Peale Polk, Mary Hawkworth Riddell and daughter Agnes, 1791.
The chemise gown in the collection of the Musée de la Toile de Jouy, and alleged to have been the wedding dress of Madame Oberkampf, follows the late-80s/early-90s construction.
Musée de la Toile de Jouy, dress worn by Madame Oberkampf, c. 1787.
This style of bodice persists all the way to the end of the 18th century, with the waistline raising according to fashionable taste. The sleeves become tight fitted to the wrist, abandoning the original billowy chemise sleeves. So, as you can see, in general, the earlier the chemise, the less structured. The later the chemise, the more structured.
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