The gold dress she wore for the 2012 Diamond Jubilee palace pop concert was influenced by the golden figure on the Queen Victoria Memorial, around which the stage was constructed.

There were masked balls, she donned a domino, into her company came notorious court seducers and in the company she kept in her small world was not of the court, spies were routed. She takes her place in this wonderland of pouf creation and extravagance that will bring down the Austrian daughter of the Caesar's. This book should definitely be read after one reads Antonia Fraser's "Marie Antoniette: A Journey." This is not a definitive biography, nor does it claim to be. However, it looks at the ill-fated queen in a unique and textual way- through the clothing choices she made at every juncture in her tenure as Dauphine, and later Queen of France.It is the beginning of seeing that a chest of magical never ending money can in fact be drained to its very dredges by a young dressmaker’s extraordinary inventiveness. It is the Dauphine doing but Rose supplied the colour, the boundless eyes on poufs and fashions and the palette of why not have one in every colour. Anything the plum and cake filled girl pointed a demanding finger at. This and that she’d have. The immensity of her power, is something to consider, when you think of of the consequence for the Dauphine, Rose in her flounces with her pretty face, a good bosom, is though constantly reminded to know her place.

The title of Queen of Fashion: What Marie Antoinette Wore to the Revolution is somewhat misleading, because this book isn't about fashion in the narrow sense of clothing. There are descriptions of Marie Antoinette's luxurious outfits and of the styles she promoted (like the Rousseauesque country muslin dress, the gaulle). But the author discusses a whole range of courtly styles and habits and shows how Marie Antoinette attempted to assert her individuality in this constrained sphere that was allowed her. Rose whose millinery bills will be eye watering figures and whose shop is patronised by all the frivolous women who want to look and dress like the Dauphine. Silly women make their way to her in droves but like to secure their goods with a proper semblance of humility from the little milliner, when she is sometimes impetuous and spirited, just because she is a drab with gifted fingers and an eye for elaborate frippery does not mean she should not know her place! This is probably the 5th times I've read this novel. I received this book as a gift for my sweet 16th birthday (the theme was masquerade/costumes, which I went as Marie Antoinette). One of my good friends got this book for me. When I got it, I wanted to go home and read it right then and there. However, I restrained myself. When they took Mops from her the one attachment of her grieving heart, she had only them to look too for affection, and was reminded when she burst into tears and flung herself into the arms of one of them , that there would be no more display of tears. She was only a girl, no matter how you look at it, and what she was freighted to carry. Tiny weights are also put into daywear hemlines in case of windy weather, and fabrics that crumple or could potentially develop messy loose strands are avoided.

This was an exceptional biography of Marie Antoinette with fashion as a decoding device akin to an anthropological device used in ethnography. More than any other treatment of Marie Antoinette this thoroughly researched work really set her in an historic cultural framework. Moreover, there was no glossing over the less attractive behaviors and attitudes of our heroine. Instead they are presented as all too human foibles exacerbated by the stultifying and constricted world of the French court amid socio-political crisis and change. That this was a a spoiled and terrible court is obvious but she was a little Maid, representing Vienna, and the hope of a peaceful alliance between the two countries. Trips to Canada featured red and white ensembles in tribute to the Canadian flag, along with her diamond maple leaf brooch, while her first high-profile and diplomatically sensitive visit to Ireland saw the monarch choose green – the Republic’s national colour. The story of Marie Antoinette is very well told, by Caroline Weber, it shows the child Marie Antoinette was ,and the game way she stepped up to this great alliance knowing all she represented. Her entrance in her silver gown into the palace of Versailles, a daughter of the Caesars, beneath the Apollo ceiling, and before the goatish king her new father in law, all that is beautifully told. As is the poor girls experience of of the court arriving in her bedchamber to observe herself and her buffoon bridegroom on the point of (hopefully) coitus. 'She blushed and hide herself under the gold embroidered bedspread. And there was no sex. We know this because her sheets were inspected next morning.' The pouffs roses so high on the Sillies heads, that bed attendants had to climb on bed ladders to cover the pouf and the Silly had to sleep on many pillows, the pouf wrapped in endless swaddling. The pouf with vegetables was very much the thing, the Sillies said they would never favour flowers again.