Who was Marie Antoinette's modiste?

Question

Who was Marie Antoinette's modiste?

Answer 1

Marie-Jeanne Rose Bertin (2 July 1747 - 22 September 1813) was the French milliner and modist to Queen Marie Antoinette. She was the first celebrated French fashion designer, and is widely credited with having brought fashion and haute couture to the forefront of popular culture.

Bertin apprenticed at an early age with a modist (clothing creator). She opened her own clothing shop -Le Grand Mogol in 1770 and quickly found customers among influential noble ladies. When Marie Antoinette arrived in France from Austria, she embraced France's new styles and fashions as one way to show her sincere dedication to her new country.

She was introduced to Bertin in 1772. Twice a week, soon after Marie Antoinette's coronation, Bertin would present her newest creations for the young queen and spend hours discussing her creations. The Queen adored her wardrobe and was passionate about every detail, and Bertin, as her milliner, became her confidante and friend.

In the mid-18th century, French women had begun to "pouf" (raise) their hair with pads and pomade and wore oversized luxurious gowns. Bertin used and exaggerated the leading modes of the day, and created poufs for Marie Antoinette with heights up to three feet. The pouf fashion reached such extremes that it became a period trademark, along with decorating the hair with ornaments and objects which showcased current events.

Working with Léonard, the Queen's royal hairdresser, Bertin created a coiffure that became the rage all over Europe: hair would be accessorized, stylized, cut into defining scenes, and modeled into shapes and objects---ranging from recent gossip to nativities to husbands' infidelities, to French naval vessels such as the Belle Poule, to the pouf aux insurgents in honor of the American Revolutionary War. The Queen's most famous coif was the "inoculation" pouf that she wore to publicize her success in persuading the King to be vaccinated against smallpox.

Marie Antoinette also called upon Bertin to dress up dolls in the latest fashion as gifts for her sisters and her mother, the Empress Maria Theresa of Austria, this dolls were called "Pandoras", and can be made of wax, wood or porcelain, there were the little ones the size of a common doll toy, or the big ones as big or half as a real person, were in vogue until the aparition of the fashion magazines.

Answer 2

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Answer 3

Rose Bertin.

One of the earliest of the high-fashion, brand-name modistes was Rose Bertin, favorite designer to Marie Antoinette. Born in Abbeville in 1747, Rose Bertin set up shop as a marchande de modes (female fashion merchant) in 1773, in a luxurious boutique on the rue Saint-Honore. In 1774, she expanded her offerings to include what came to be known as the 'pouf,' wild headresses to go with the enormous dresses. These were made in conjunction with Marie Antoinette's equally snooty and extravagent hairdresser, Leonard, and were built on a scaffolding of wire, cloth, gauze, horsehair, fake hair, and the woman's own hair, teased up off the forehead. After being doused with powder, the coiffure could become the canvas for all sorts of still-lifes and props (ships, windmills, babies, you name it).

Through her rich clients the duchesse de Chartres and the princesse de Lamballe, Bertin came to the notice of Marie Antoinette, who had just become queen and was feeling her fashion wings (or wild oats). A style was born. One of their earliest collaborations was a pouf titled 'coiffure a l'Iphigenie' (to pay tribute to Gluck's opera), quickly followed by the 'pouf a l'inoculation,' to celebrate her husband's successeful smallpox innoculation. Bertin also designed the queen's coronation gown, an elaborate affair heavily embroidered with gold thread and sapphires, which almost had to make the trip to Rheims on a special stretcher (until the lady-in-waiting balked at carrying it).

Bertin's creations (which cost roughly twenty times what a skilled artisan would earn in a year) helped establish France as the center of the fashion industry, which has persisted to this day. But Bertin, reportedly an abrasive woman, was deeply resented, both by the aristocracy (who felt the queen treated her, a mere tradeswoman, with too much favor and distinction), and by the middle and lower classes. She was snooty to would-be customers (for example, refusing to outfit the 'wife of a mere prosecutor from Bordeaux!'), and the wild extravagence of her creations was derided in the midst of depressions and famines. As a woman, Bertin inspired particular resentment for taking precedence over her male colleagues, and was sneeringly called Marie Antoinette's 'Minister of Fashion' and 'Minister of Trinkets.'

During the Revolution, Bertin eventually moved her business to London, returning to Paris in 1795, where Josephine was one of her main customers. But fashions had changed, and she soon retired to her house in the town of Epinay sur Seine, where she died in 1813.

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