Queen of Fashion: What Marie Antoinette Wore to the Revolution - Hardcover

In this sparkling new vision of the notorious French queen, dynamic young historian Caroline Weber reveals how Marie Antoinette's bold attempts to reshape royal fashion changed the future of the French nation. Marie Antoinette has always been recognised as a style icon, but none of her biographers has paid sustained attention to her clothes. Drawing on new research to illuminate each phase of the queen's tumultuous life, Weber surveys her 'Revolution in Dress', beginning with the young girl accustomed to Austria's more relaxed style, then struggling to cope with the organ-crushing whalebone corsets and vast hoop skirts of Versailles. In power, Marie Antoinette used striking, often extreme costumes to wage war against her enemies, but she gradually lost her hold over the French as she began to adopt 'unqueenly' attire (the provocative chemise). The weapons used to secure her triumphs would also be the means of her undoing. This stylish, witty and original biography offers a moving reinterpretation of one of history's most controversial figures.

Caroline Weber is a professor at Columbia University, where she specialises in 18th-century French literature and history. She lives in New York City.