106 SEPTEMBER 2019 | TOWNANDCOUNTRYMAG.COM
to doff their hats to the king. It was a show
of sartorial defiance that hinted at the insur-
rectionary fury that would lay waste to the
Bastille two months later.
Three years after that, the radicals of the
group felled the monarchy itself with the
support of their scrappier, scruffier confrères:
working-class toughs who, because they
wore cheap, homespun trousers rather than
gentlemanly knee breeches and silk stock-
ings, became known as the sans-culottes. (The
gilets jaunes of their modern counterparts are
typically associated with truck drivers and
road workers.)
In the Revolution’s wake the French upper
middle class pointedly rejected the flamboy-
ant style of the overthrown grandees. Whereas
the ancien régime favored colorful, bedazzled
apparel and outlandish accessories (such as the
three-foot-high pouf headdresses and ostrich
egg–size coat buttons favored by the ladies
and lords, respectively, in Marie Antoinette’s
circle), the elite of post-monarchy France put
a premium on understatement. Mirroring the
garb of the bourgeoisie’s black-coated revolu-
tionary forefathers, this aesthetic favors muted
colors, clean lines, and functional fabrics.
For much of the 20th century, certain sta-
ples—Gabrielle Chanel’s sporty tweed jackets,
practical fake pearls, and simple, neutral-tone
jersey dresses (“Jersey,” notes Chanel biogra-
pher Rhonda Garelick, “was working-class”)—
telegraphed a comfortable if dignified
disposition. Then Yves Saint Laurent draped
Catherine Deneuve in knee-length skirts and a
sensual vinyl trench coat in Luis Buñuel’s 1967
film Belle de Jour, and women suddenly recon-
sidered: Bourgeois could be transgressive, even
powerful. For their fall lineups, designers took
up some of these trappings and charged them
with renewed agency—Cristóbal Balenciaga’s
oversize Vareuse tunic came from “a uniform of the poor,” according
to Balenciaga’s artistic director, Demna Gvasalia; and Anthony Vac-
carello channeled Deneuve, Betty Catroux, and Bianca Jagger in his
current offering for Saint Laurent, once the pinnacle of Rive Gauche
savoir faire. In his barrage of culottes, Slimane, himself something
of fashion flamethrower, dared the revival of a once maligned style.
The semiotics of wealth and privilege are irresistibly fertile ground
for designers, but such charged subjects are to be handled with care
out here in the real world. In January, French first lady Brigitte Macron
sported, on a state visit to Egypt, a pair of Louis Vuitton Run Away
sneakers, which start at $650 and can go above $900, a month’s sal-
ary for your average yellow-vester. In the United States, Louise Lin-
ton, the actress wife of Treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin, was once
the subject of ridicule for ostentatious name-checking of expensive
brands (#HERMESSCARF, #VALENTINOROCKSTUDHEELS, #TOMFORDSUNNIES) on her Insta-
gram account. On both sides of the Atlantic, these indiscretions have
led to indignant comparisons to France’s most infamous pampered
housewife, Marie Antoinette, whose controversial clothing choices Istudied in my 2016 biography, Queen of Fashion. The egregiously mis-
understood monarch was called a bourgeois Austrian by her critics,
because, as a Hapsburg, she had been raised less informally than the
Bourbons, and she was accused of triggering a financial crisis with
her spending. But those jabs were misguided, spun by malcontents
to stoke anger against an iniquitous regime the queen neither created
nor controlled. Today her apocryphal “let them eat cake” has become
shorthand for gross insensitivity and brazen entitlement, especially,
if not exclusively, on the part of high-placed female political figures.
The latest bourgeois fashions, with their crisp tailoring and func-
tional simplicity, may not be any more affordable than the Vuitton
sneakers that provoked the ire of the gilets jaunes. But, crucially and
cleverly, they pay tribute to a history that is at once aesthetically con-
servative and politically provocative. And in today’s turbulent age,
when cries of “Marie Antoinette!” increasingly punctuate outrage
aimed at the ruling class, perhaps the safest solution for the well-
heeled is to dress like the people who laid her low. A sartorial version
of having one’s cake—while keeping one’s head.ABOVE: PRADA DRESS ($4,680); MOYNAT HANDBAG ($9,500); WING & WEFT GLOVES ($150); BALENCIAGA PUMPS ($995).
OPPOSITE: BOTTEGA VENETA COAT ($9,450) AND HANDBAG ($4,850). FOR DETAILS SEE PAGE 152