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00:05Marie Antoinette is seen as history's ultimate fashion icon, and its ultimate fashion victim.
00:12Her extravagant wardrobe is the stuff of legend, and yet not a single gown known to have been
00:17worn by her survives today.
00:23What we do have are portraits, like this one painted in 1783 by the Queen's favourite artist,
00:30Vigie Le Brun.
00:31And its story, and the story of the dress she wears in it, are as scandalous and as intriguing
00:37as the Queen herself.
00:40When this portrait was unveiled, it caused huge damage to an already unpopular monarchy.
00:45It looks really informal for a court portrait, especially those of Marie Antoinette, who
00:51we associate with this very lavish, sumptuous clothing, so I'm really keen to unravel the
00:57story behind it.
00:59Now, fashion and dress took on a really ideological role during the fall of the French monarchy,
01:04so I really want to see what this portrait can tell us about this tumultuous period in
01:09history, and especially the place of Marie Antoinette within that.
01:14The chemise a la reine, as the gown worn in this portrait became known, was a radical
01:19departure for Marie Antoinette, and a complete contrast to the highly structured garments favoured
01:25by the rest of the court.
01:33I'm keen to find out from Ninia if the dress is as simple as it looks.
01:37Marie Antoinette, as a figure, still looms large in the history of fashion and in pop culture
01:44in general, but this portrait of her is a very different Marie Antoinette from the very
01:52wide skirts and very elaborate silks that we're used to seeing her in.
01:55So, what is this dress actually made of?
01:58It's actually made of a very fine cotton muslin.
02:02So, I've got some samples here. It comes in super, super fine, or slightly more opaque.
02:10So soft, aren't they?
02:12It's more like, well, hence why it was so shocking at the time, it's more like a nightdress or underwear,
02:17really.
02:17Yeah.
02:18My understanding of the time is that with this style of gown, the chemise à la reine,
02:23you'd still have your stays and your petticoat underneath, and they would still be silk in the tradition.
02:29So how do we know that she's wearing stays under this?
02:33It was still a very strong convention at this date. It's a very radical thing to be wearing the chemise
02:39on the outside when it's essentially a piece of underwear, but it's a whole other step for a lady
02:45to just let go of her stays altogether.
02:47So how will you make the stays?
02:50Well, I'm going to get Harriet to make the stays, and she'll be making them from a linen foundation
02:55covered with a silk brocade, and we've found some really lovely brocade.
03:00Oh, wow. Look at that.
03:02I know. It's got little birds and flowers, and it feels to me very Marie Antoinette.
03:06It's very Marie Antoinette, isn't it? Definitely.
03:09And so what particular sort of tools or techniques will you be using to recreate this?
03:14Lots of bone channels to sew, and bones to prepare and insert into those channels.
03:20It's quite hard on the hands. You have to be quite strong, actually, to make a good pair of stays.
03:25And then the chemise, it's really just an awful lot of fine hand sewing, because all the sewing
03:31is very much on show, with the fabric being very sheer like that, and it's really important
03:37that all of the edges of the muslin are very, very straight.
03:42That sounds incredibly fiddly.
03:44It's very skilful.
03:46Yeah. Again, like we so often say, it looks like, oh, this will be a simple one.
03:50But there's a lot of yards of hand sewing in that.
03:54As it's held in private ownership, we don't have access to the original painting.
04:00But its sister portrait hangs at Marie Antoinette's private Versailles getaway, Le Petit Trianon,
04:06where the Austrian-born queen escaped the stultifying etiquette of the French court,
04:11and the chemise gown became the unofficial uniform among her inner circle.
04:16It's also where I'm meeting art curator, Juliette Trey.
04:21So Marie Antoinette's pose in this portrait is very similar to the chemise a la rain portrait.
04:27What's the relationship between the two?
04:30Oh, they're very close.
04:31This portrait is actually a kind of replica.
04:34The portrait with the chemise dress was shown at the salon in 1783, and it caused a great scandal.
04:41And so Vigée Le Brun had to take the painting away and replace it straight away.
04:46So she kept exactly the same pose, but she changed the dress.
04:51And so what was so shocking about the chemise dress portraits?
04:55So the salon is a public exhibition that takes place at Louvre every two years,
05:01and absolutely everybody goes to the salon.
05:04The chemise dress was worn already at Versailles, but it could be worn inside,
05:11it could be worn at the Petit Trianon, but it could not be worn as a formal dress.
05:15And the problem with the salon is that the queen appears in front of all the people who come to
05:21visit the salon.
05:22It's as if she's here herself, and she could not appear in front of everyone in an informal dress.
05:29So that was quite inappropriate.
05:32Cotton and muslin, which were used for the dress, were also the materials you would use for underwear.
05:38And it was also shocking that way to see the queen showing herself in her underwear, so to say.
05:44So it was more the audacity of having this painting shown in public than the actual dress itself that was
05:51shocking.
05:52Absolutely. That goes completely against the idea that she's the queen.
05:56She should be there for her people and she should assume her responsibility as a monarch.
06:01How much did this damage the reputation of Marie Antoinette?
06:05It's hard to say exactly because she was never very much loved by the French people.
06:10But we could say that it is the beginning of a downfall.
06:27Well, I've got the lovely silk brocade for the Marie Antoinette stays.
06:31And I'm just looking to see where the pattern lies because obviously we don't want to cut it wastefully
06:37and we want the final pattern to be displayed best on the actual pieces of the stays.
06:46Early stays, you have some whale bone. Very, very expensive.
06:51But many stays are stiffened with reeds. They're called bents. It's like dried grasses.
06:57Like these?
06:59So you can see individually they have no strength at all.
07:04But when you bundle them up together and hold them very tightly inside a channel, it's very good, very flexible.
07:13It's a wonderful material and even up to the 19th century there's records of women, poor women,
07:20going and seeking down by the riverside, seeking rushes to stiffen their own stays with.
07:28I think this is Marie Antoinette's chemise.
07:33Ooh.
07:38Wow.
07:40That's gorgeous.
07:41That's exactly, isn't it?
07:43Really lovely.
07:44So that's her sash.
07:47And here's the muslin.
07:50Lovely, lovely.
07:53Yeah, nice choice.
07:53She's going to look very fresh, isn't she?
07:55She is.
07:56Yeah.
07:58Yeah.
07:58As with everything worn by Marie Antoinette, the chemise a la Raine became the height of fashion.
08:05Chemise gowns are so delicate there are only two known to be in existence.
08:10One is held at a small museum near the Palace of Versailles.
08:15When we think about 18th century women's clothing, we tend to think about court dress, very formal, very structured.
08:24The silks, the panniers, you know, the enormous shapes.
08:28Whereas this, I just would love to put it on and roll around on a chaise longue somewhere.
08:34It looks like it would feel luxurious and comfortable and soft and just amazing.
08:40And all right.
08:42Looking at it from a 21st century perspective, this dress does look very simple.
08:47That kind of pastoral, shepherdess style that Marie Antoinette was so in love with in Petit Trianon, in the grounds
08:57of Versailles,
08:58wearing something like this, swanning around her gardens.
09:02You've got this kind of romantic, rural ideal.
09:07But what we also see is that simple as it is, it would still have been very expensive.
09:14The muslin itself was actually very expensive.
09:17It was an imported fabric.
09:19But crucially, at this time, keeping something white is very laborious, very time consuming and so very, very expensive.
09:29It's kind of like wearing a status symbol.
09:31So essentially what it is, is a very wealthy woman's idea, a queen's idea of how a peasant might dress
09:41or how a shepherdess might dress.
09:44Which is incredibly patronising when you think about it.
09:48And you can really see why that misquote, let them eat cake, really stuck to Marie Antoinette when you look
09:55at a dress like this.
10:11Wow, lots of different things going on here, lots of different colours.
10:14We've all got different bits of Marie Antoinette, haven't we?
10:18So take me through in stages.
10:20I have the chemise à la Rennes.
10:22A feature of this garment is a very fine hem all the way, well lots of very fine hems.
10:27And the only way you can do a really fine hem on a very thin fabric like this is if
10:31it's dead straight on the grain.
10:33And the way to get it dead straight on the grain is to draw out a thread first.
10:37You're drawing out one thread from across this whole length of fabric.
10:42How on earth do you do that?
10:44I have a pin.
10:45Yeah.
10:46I pick up the thread with the pin and lift it up.
10:53There you see?
10:54And you see how it makes it pucker?
10:56Yeah.
10:57So I'm left with this very faint kind of line where I've pulled the thread out.
11:01Yeah.
11:01That's where I'll cut along with my shears and then I'll know that I can do a nice hem on
11:06it.
11:06Yeah.
11:06Wow, that sounds really really fiddly.
11:09So what are you working on Harriet?
11:10Well I'm working on the stays, these get worn underneath.
11:13So these are quite tough garments.
11:17They were cut out by men.
11:19Really?
11:19Big responsibility cutting fabric.
11:21Yeah.
11:21If you ruin the silk then that's a lot of money.
11:23A lot of money isn't it.
11:24How are you with scissors?
11:26Er, okay.
11:28Let's throw caution to the winds.
11:32If you cut around this, cut around the edge.
11:36This, I feel quite stressed about this.
11:41So do I.
11:41Oh gosh.
11:43So literally I'm just cutting.
11:45You're just cutting.
11:46This exact shape.
11:47And it's all pinned on so I shouldn't.
11:49It's pinned on, it can't go anywhere.
11:51Okay.
11:52Unless I take it away.
11:53And if I do that, stop cutting because something's gone wrong.
11:56Okay.
11:57Alright, so I'm going in.
11:58Going in.
11:58He's doing it.
12:00Keep these upright.
12:01Keep these nice and upright.
12:07It's a lovely sound isn't it?
12:10Enjoy the sound.
12:12It's screaming inside my head.
12:17Yep.
12:19Yep.
12:20Okay.
12:21Good.
12:21Is that alright?
12:22Yes.
12:24I like how you all stop work and you're just staring.
12:27No pressure.
12:28No pressure.
12:29Well, if she's got my shears, I was going to cut them.
12:33Come along apprentice.
12:35Oh dear.
12:36I feel like I'm going to lose control of them because they're so, I feel like the end of
12:41them is so far away from my hat.
12:45Oh, it's tricky.
12:46The curves.
12:50Yay.
12:51Lovely.
12:52Congratulations.
12:53Brilliant.
12:54And so how, how would you rate my cutting?
12:57Fair.
13:00Very good.
13:01Can I have my shears patting?
13:03Yes, of course.
13:13For a real sense of how radical a departure the new look was, we have one remaining direct
13:19link to Marie Antoinette.
13:25Her wardrobe book for 1782, just one year before our portrait was painted.
13:32I cannot wait to see this.
13:34This is amazing.
13:40Oh, wow.
13:43This book is so exciting to look at.
13:48Some of these swatches here, you can see tiny, tiny pinpricks.
13:54Now, some historians have suggested that this is where Marie Antoinette would go through
14:00this book and choose the fabrics that she wanted to wear that day by putting a pin in them.
14:08If that's the case, then what we're looking at here, just in these tiny holes, is her making
14:18these aesthetic decisions, these fashion choices that will go on to define her.
14:23It just feels like such a tangible link to the past.
14:28The idea that, you know, she may have been looking through these, deciding what to wear.
14:33That's something that all of us do every day.
14:36We get up, we decide what we're going to wear.
14:40Wow.
14:42These tiny embroidered flowers are absolutely exquisite and, again, just really fit into that idea
14:52of this sort of pastoral romanticism that was so in vogue at this time and that Marie Antoinette
14:59herself was such a champion of.
15:04A really beautiful array of silks.
15:09Lyon in France was a huge centre of silk production at this time.
15:16What Marie Antoinette wore was taken up by her fellow courtiers, people outside of the court.
15:22She thought everyone wanted to dress like the Queen.
15:25She really set the fashions, which then, of course, filtered down to the rest of society.
15:34Seeing the extent of the patterns and the colours really brings home how much of a contrast it
15:42would be to suddenly see Marie Antoinette dressed in a very simple muslin gown.
15:48She was accused of putting tens of thousands of silk merchants out of work, of silk manufacturers
15:56out of work.
15:59From looking through these wardrobe books, we really get a sense of why Marie Antoinette's
16:05attempt to simplify her wardrobe became an issue of such contention.
16:10It really went against two of the most important aspects of her royal life.
16:19She was expected to encourage French manufacturing, support the silk industry, and she was also expected
16:26to inspire respect for the throne.
16:28And in dressing like this pastoral shepherdess, she really didn't do that.
16:34She was seen as transgressing class boundaries, and she became this incredibly divisive figure.
16:58I am sewing on casings for the drawstrings in the sleeves of the chemise a la Wren.
17:10So, this is one sleeve, and you can see the three casings that I am sewing in.
17:16And at the end of each casing, there is an eyelet hole, because through those eyelet holes
17:21will be threaded a tape, a nice thin cotton tape to thread through, and it will create this
17:29puffy arrangement that you can see in the portrait.
17:33She has got these puffed up gathered bits.
17:37I am still working on the stays.
17:40There is a lot of work in a pair of stays, which is ironic when you consider that they
17:43then get covered up and not seen at all.
17:45The way this stitch goes, you are coming out of one side and going down into the fold of
17:53the seam allowance on the other side.
17:56And you go right across it, because it is going to be going through all the layers to get as
18:02much of a grip on the other side as you can.
18:04And then you swing it round, and you come down into the other side and do the same thing.
18:09And it forms like a figure of eight, which again, kind of locks it together.
18:16And really, yeah, I mean, that is really not going anywhere.
18:20You can see light through it, just, but that is breathing holes.
18:32By 1789, Marie Antoinette's popularity was at an all-time low.
18:37The previous winter had been so cold, the Seine froze over, and a bad harvest meant there
18:43wasn't enough bread.
18:44To many, the court, and particularly the foreign-born queen, symbolised all that was wrong with the country.
18:51On July 14th, an angry mob stormed the Bastille prison, which had become a symbol of royal dictatorial rule.
18:59The French Revolution had begun.
19:01Marie Antoinette spent the last nine weeks of her life here at the Conciergerie,
19:06a medieval palace turned prison, where she was completely stripped of her royal prestige
19:12and was known as the Widow Cafe.
19:15In strict mourning for her husband, Louis XVI, beheaded some months earlier,
19:21the queen, who had railed against the lack of privacy at the French court,
19:24was under constant surveillance.
19:27I'm here to meet historian Andrew Hussey to find out more about Marie Antoinette's last days.
19:33So we're here in what I think is quite a beautiful room.
19:37It's a chapel of remembrance, but it's on the site of the cell that Marie Antoinette was held in for
19:44the last nine weeks of her life.
19:46Do we know anything about her state of mind while she was here?
19:49We know that she came here in the early hours of August 2nd, 1793.
19:55And a bit like now, there was a heat wave in Paris, and it was famously sweltering when she got
20:00to this cell.
20:01And she arrived about two or three o'clock in the morning.
20:04I think probably in 21st century terms, we would say she was in deep shock and trauma,
20:10and she never really recovered from that.
20:12What was her life here have been like?
20:14Do you know what? It's hard to imagine a sharper difference between life at Versailles,
20:21which was the big society, the spectacle, the great open spaces, the great mise-en-scene,
20:27the fait galance, you know, all these big parties they had and all of these orgies and all that kind
20:31of thing,
20:32to this claustrophobic, sweltering, nightmarish scene out of Kafka.
20:37But, but, the two are interlinked.
20:40And in some ways, without being too clever about it,
20:43this is the direct contrast that links the society of spectacle on both sides.
20:48Because here now, she becomes a celebrity criminal.
20:52How much did her love of fashion, her love of novelty and luxury,
20:58how big a part did that play in her downfall?
21:01I don't think Marie Antoinette was guileless.
21:04She wasn't a stupid woman, and she knew what she was doing.
21:07And what she was doing was pursuing an aesthetic life rather than a political life.
21:13The problem was, in France at that time, anything you did was political.
21:18So she was, as it were, caught in a trap that whatever she did,
21:22she was, you know, going to be judged on, you know, how she looked, how she performed and so on.
21:28So, the fashion side of it wasn't the ditzy Austrian queen of legend,
21:34but it was always going to be portrayed in terms of decadence,
21:37in terms of the dangers of absolutism.
21:39Now, the famous misquote, let them eat cake.
21:42How true is this version of Marie Antoinette that we have?
21:47I think on both sides of the channel, particularly in Britain, actually,
21:50we've got this carry-on, don't lose your head, you know, version of,
21:55repeated version of Marie Antoinette.
21:57And it's not true, she was a real woman who was really killed.
22:00And she was killed just down the road in Place de la Concorde,
22:03in a city that was full of febrile revolutionaries.
22:06And as late as the early 19th century, animals would not cross the bridge over to Place de la Concorde,
22:12because the stench of blood under the pave was so powerful.
22:16And I think we forget, you know, that this was a city that had become a slaughterhouse.
22:21It was full of killers and it was full of the rabid, ferocious, murderous energy that goes with a great
22:28massive political upheaval.
22:30And she was the woman who lost her life.
22:32And she started losing it here in this cell in the heat wave in August.
22:38On October the 16th, 1793, Marie Antoinette shed her widow's weeds and slipped on a white chemise she'd managed to
22:47keep hidden from the guards,
22:48over which she wore a simple white dress and went to meet her death.
22:54Crowds lining the streets were stunned into silence when confronted by this modest, spectral figure.
23:00Her prematurely white hair matching her carefully chosen clothes.
23:05And so Marie Antoinette saved her most powerful fashion statement for last.
23:23It's a very difficult one.
23:24But it was traditional.
23:27It's interesting.
23:29It's interesting.
23:30It's interesting.
23:32I mean...
23:35I'm happy for her.
23:37It's like a beautiful woman.
23:37Do you?
23:38I'm happy for her.
23:42I'm happy for her.
23:45I'm happy for her.
23:49What do you want?
23:50What do you want?
23:53It is kind of architectural. It's incredible. Oh my God.
24:00There's absolutely no way that somebody would think this was an underwear chemise.
24:06With all of the layers as well, it's really not in any way see-through.
24:11So you also get a sense that what really angered people was this idea of class transgression,
24:18that she was trying to dress like some kind of shepherdess or a farmer's daughter.
24:24And, you know, when you're wearing this, the idea of doing any kind of herding sheep is just ridiculous.
24:33It's a horrific pastiche, isn't it, in that respect?
24:37It's so much more kind of meringue-y.
24:41It is, in effect, Princess Diana's wedding dress. Yes.
24:44Really? Yes.
24:46But she wasn't wearing the stays that you're wearing, so she had a defined curvy body.
24:52And you have the conical 18th century body.
24:57The sash is a triumph, Hannah. Yes, it is.
24:59It's really lovely.
25:02It is weightless to wear. It completely is.
25:06Like, the only pressure on your body is the pressure of the stays.
25:08So then to wear something like this after having worn silks would have felt incredibly liberating, I think.
25:17Very, very freeing.
25:18So fascinating, wearing this, having really, you know, spent some time inside her life, almost.
25:27And thinking about the magnitude of that moment when the portrait went on display.
25:36Yeah, it's quite unlike anything that came before, isn't it?
25:39Yeah.
25:40I suppose she was damned for wearing too much silk and then damned for wearing none.
25:44Poor thing.
25:45Yeah. She really couldn't win. She really couldn't win.
25:56Wearing this dress, I wasn't expecting how much kind of volume and structure all of the interior lacing was going
26:04to give it.
26:05So it had a much more dramatic silhouette.
26:09And also, of course, you have the physical experience of wearing stays, wearing the corset underneath gives so much more
26:19structure and formality than you were expecting with a garment that has always been talked about as being too informal
26:28for a queen to wear.
26:29Yeah.
26:30It really gave me an understanding of why it would appeal to Marie Antoinette.
26:35The lightness of the fabric, it's just a completely a world away from what she would have been expected to
26:44wear at court.
26:45These very sort of strict rules of etiquette and dress that we know she really did not like.
26:51She felt very constrained by this.
26:53So the weightlessness, the freedom, the liberation that this garment offered, you really get a sense of that when you
27:01actually have it on.
27:05Clothes affect the way that we move through the world.
27:09They affect the way that we stand, the way we hold ourselves.
27:12And so having the experience of putting these clothes, wearing these clothes on the body, feeling the way that these
27:20people would have felt and would have moved through the world is a really invaluable experience.
27:57Clothes Applied Indonesian
27:57You
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