Marie Antoinette, Big Hair and moi (Part III)

These poufs, no doubt, were impossible to wash and provided a bit of a breeding ground for bugs. Special head-scratchers called grattoirs were made from ivory, silver and gold. Women gracefully slid the flattened, slightly curved end of the stick up into their do for a graceful, discrete scratch.

Christie’s, Paris, April 2006

from Les Arts Décoratifs

The reign of the three Louis Louis Louis is synonymous with everything elaborate, dramatic and no doubt dazzling. Not one object – even utilitarian – seems to have escaped the court unadorned or under embellished. Shopkeepers, hairstylists and menuisiers benefited from this extravagance (while peasants paid the price). So why would a hair dressing chair be ignored? A variety was created, in different forms and from different materials. Fauteuils à coiffer, as they were called, were comfortable. They had to be, women had to sit in them for long hours. Cushioned during the winter months and caned for the summer, they were indented back to facilitate the fixing of a lady's do.

Christie’s, London, April 10, 2002

Sotheby's, Paris, France, June 14, 2006


Christie's, London, United Kingdom, December 14, 2005,
by Antoine Nicolas Delaporte, circa 1775

Not Much

My apologies, the school semester has begun (I teach) and seems like everything is due right now. I do have a Marie Antoinette part III post to present, which will be short, but I must carve out some time for it. However, in the meantime, if you are interested in reading a little about the modern American furniture design market here is something. CLICK

As the end of the month is closing in, I hope everyone is having a tolerable August!

Thoughts on the Passing of John Hughes

Though he has been gone a week, I would like to say: Thank You John Hughes.

Many of us have not forgotten you.

For those teens and young adults who struggled to understand life during the 80s, the writer and director broke everything down, categorized and explained the vunerable and impressionable dynamics of those angst-filled teenage years. He captured high school, the dress, the hair, underage drinking parties and personal emotional situations… perfectly. It was real. He didn’t sit in judgment. He didn’t make you feel alone.

The Breakfast Club, Sixteen Candles, Pretty in Pink, and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off were the ones I remember most. And also my favorites of the time.

I had a bit of a thing for 'Bender' in The Breakfast Club. His dirty, disheveled bad boyness intrigued me. I attended an all-girls 'Claire' kind of school and proper parents didn’t like for us to associate ourselves with the broken type. Donning our monogrammed sweaters, kilt skirts and tasseled loafers, we were groomed to marry the Emilio Estevez popular athlete who made good grades, the right choices and called his father ‘sir’.


Or worse, James Spader's character in Pretty in Pink, with his upturned collar, cigarette dangling from his lips and reeking of Polo cologne in the classic green bottle.

But John Hughes safely exposed me to the outcast creative angry type. And there was no turning back.

In high school, I was looking for the 'Bender', but instead dated a football player from another school. He wasn’t dirty or disheveled, he just got into a lot of trouble, chain smoked and dressed weird, and I liked that. I moved on and dated the various types John Hughes had characterized up on the screen, and then some in between. Regardless of which character each resembled (it's sounding as if there were many, not the case), and how diverse I thought my range to be, they all had something in common. It is interesting how there is a certain something -- a type, a look, a mind -- that embeds in our heads at a young age which we can never seem to shake. It took me a long time to realize the 'Bender' type I was looking for didn’t have to be the brooding outcast. And more importantly, he didn’t have to have an arrest record in his repertoire.

So thank you John Hughes for broadening my horizons of male suitors, I wouldn’t have explored the variety of types and made so many horrendous (and expensive) mistakes if it wasn’t for your films. I finally ended up with one who is just right. I probably wouldn't have gotten here unless I explored these other very, very bumpy roads. Though annoying and painful, I salute you for what you did to make me who I am.

8.8

To my husband who surprised me this morning with a cupcake and flowers for our anniversary. Although I know you will never be reading this, (which will also spare me from you realizing just how corny I can be), you mean the world to me.

And to my first little Westie in heaven. Happy Birthday Tulla! I miss you so much each and every day. You taught me how to be kind and patient no matter what. When you died, I felt for a long, long while as if someone had taken a metal ice cream scoop and cut out a jagged hole where my heart once beat. You waited, I am sure, to go when you knew I was safe. That gives me comfort. But still after these years, I have such sadness, my breaths are short and tight when I think of you.

(Top image from Cupcake a la Mode; Bottom image: Tulla's last birthday with her Uncle Tony)

Marie Antoinette, Big Hair and moi (Part II)

By 1769, shortly after Marie Antoinette arrived to the French court, there were no less than 1200 hairdressers in Paris. Over time, Marie Antoinette began wearing larger and more ornate bouffants. The collaboration between her famous milliner, Rose Bertin, and her hairdresser, Léonard, proved to be quite a creative one and the vogue for these hairstyles lasted for ten years. Marie Antoinette began to don more and more outrageous hairstyles. She didn't invent fashions -- she promoted radical new ones – and set the trend. These hairstyles became all the rage among the aristocracy. Women began to do more than decorate their big coifs with ribbons, feathers, flowers, beads and jewelry. They crowned it with silk or lace. But after some time, that just wasn’t enough.

Marie Antoinette by Jacques-Fabien Gautier D'Agoty (1775) Musee Antoine-Lecuyer, Saint-Quentin France

In the court of Louis XVI, members competed for attention and tried to outdo each other with witty remarks and the latest novelty fashions. The most unusual hairdo would soon have to be outdone by another -- something more ingenious and over the top.

Image from La Mesure de l'Excellence.

A beehive form made from wire was created stuffed with wool or horse hair, and then it was mounted on top of the head. Hair was wrapped around these frames – and when women didn’t have enough (or it was too fine or thin) false hair was added -- building it up to soar up to three feet high. The do was powered with flour which helped to set the creation and absorb natural oils from the head. But it was this same flour that so many starving peasants desperately needed to have to bake bread.

Image from La Mesure de l'Excellence.

Women placed in their hair little figurines made from fabric and small objects made from papier maché. Their hairdresser arranged them as sceneries or landscapes. Sometimes, they used their hair as a stage to replicate historical scenes or sometimes to communicate an emotion -- sentimental pouf -- this type of do was called.

Image from La Mesure de l'Excellence.

Themes began to develop. Marie Antoinette wore a pouf à la jardinière which included such garden vegetables as carrots, radishes, an artichoke and a head of cabbage. Another woman exclaimed in glee after seeing the pouf do that she would never again wear anything but vegetables in her hair. “Vegetables were so much more natural than flowers,” she said. Women were not to be involved in politics. It wasn’t a ladylike thing to do. But it didn’t mean they couldn’t participate in their own way. Marie Antoinette wore her pouf a’ la inoculation in support of the small pox vaccination which showed Aesculapius’s serpent wrapped around an olive tree.

She wore these hairstyles at court and in town, and this had a swift and contagious effect. Rose Bertin, a mere plebeian, was now known as the Minister of Fashion.

"Everybody was talking of the poufs created by the firm of Bertin . . . one famous pouf was that of the Duchesse de Lauzun. She appeared at a reception wearing a most delicious pouf. It contained a stormy sea, ducks swimming near the shore, someone on the point of shooting one of them; on the top of the head there was a mill, the miller’s wife being made love to by an abbe, whilst near the ear the miller could be seen leading a donkey."

excerpt from Rose Bertin -- The Creator of Fashion at the Court of Marie Antoinette. By Émile Langlade. Published in 1913. I so want to find this book....

“The Preposterous Head Dress, or the Featherd Lady", London: Published by M. Darly, March 20, 1776. Yale Library.


The Duchesse de Chartres was one of the biggest big pouf wearers. She wore in her pouf small figures of her five children. Another time she appeared at the opera with her hair dressed in a sentimental pouf – nestled in it she had a little figure of her eldest son in his nurse's arms, a parrot pecking at a cherry, a little black boy, and the initials of her son and husband.

This trend spread England and to Sweden, one woman was report to have even created a replica of her dead husband’s tombstone.

“Miss Juniper Fox”, London. Published by M. Darly, March 2, 1777. Yale Library.

One of the most fashionable hairstyles of the eighteenth century was called: À la Belle Poule, which commemorated the victory of a French ship over an English ship in 1778.


In 1776 the Duchess of Devonshire was said to have made the addition of ostrich feathers, beads and flowers fashionable in le pouf. “Lady All-Top", London: Published by J. Lockington, May 15, 1776. Yale Library.

These big hairstyles created problems though. Hairstyles would obstruct other patron’s views at the theatre. It was difficult to move through doorways or in and out of carriages without knocking it over. Women would stick their head out of a moving carriage – the roof was simply not high enough. Some women kneeled on the floor for the extra room. Rumor says that many slept upright for weeks as not to muss their do. And many others would get their hair caught on fire from candlelit sconces. Lice, mice and other such things were said to have made these pouf their home.

This one is my favorite: "Miss Shuttle-Cock", London, Published by M. Darly, December 6, 1776. Yale Library.

Queens were always expected to look like the king’s dutiful subject – necessary only to produce heirs. It was the king’s expensive, flashy favorite mistresses for whom ultra-chic fashion was appropriate -- not his wife. But Louis XVI was faithful to Marie Antoinette and instead of providing excitement in the bedroom, he allowed her to spend spend and spend some more. Marie Antoinette’s end was tragic, no doubt. She lived a life of furbelows, flounces, and fandangle, (I don’t think I’ve used that word since 1982!); extravagance and excessive spending. And then she paid for it -- her pouf permanently separated from her shoulders.

(Top image from Boston Museum of Fine Art: Gallerie des Modes et Costumes Français. 2e. Cahier des Nouveaux Costumes Français pour les Coeffures B.12 (duplicate) "Pouf d'un gout nouveau..."French, 1778)