Chemise Post #11: Caroline Weber talks about the chemise à la reine
Originally published at Historical Personality Disorder. Please leave any comments there.
I’m going out of town for the weekend so I’ll be republishing the next three Chemise Gown installments from the original blog I started a couple of years ago to specifically track my research progress on this project.
August 10, 2012
Click to viewI just found this video linked to on The Royal Corospondent. It’s a video from 2007 of Caroline Weber, author of Queen of Fashion: What Marie Antoinette Wore To The Revolution, giving a lecture at the University of Michigan on the topic of Marie Antoinette’s “sartorial semiotics.” In other words, the significance of the fashion that Marie Antoinette used to create a political identity. It’s a really good overview of her book, distilled into 50 minutes or so of discourse, with questions at the end (though, spoiler alert: She sadly does not give us the Lacanian analysis of the pouf hairstyle).
I also came across another interesting vlog that Dr. Weber recorded talking about the comparisons between pre-Revolution France and modern American fashion:
If haven’t already bought the book Queen of Fashion, I just so happen to have a brand new hard copy version for sale on Half.com. It’s a fantastic book, very readable, and a very different take on Marie Antoinette.
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