The Solar King, Louis XIV (1643–1715) launched high fashion, the enterprise of vogue. It was a superb transfer. He made private look vital for social interplay.
At court docket, the king himself was impeccably dressed, and he required the identical of his courtiers. Clothes needed to match completely, be made with stunning materials, and be impeccably clear. This strict costume code affected each a part of one’s life. The king required a sure etiquette of costume for each time of the day: dressing robes for morning, day costume for the afternoon, and night robes for social occasions. Sure materials had been made for every season (which we nonetheless use immediately): silk in summer time, velvet in winter. These adjustments made aristocrats in France conscious of their conduct and look.
Consciousness of 1’s private look continued after Louis’s reign however lent itself to extremes. Girls wore excessive, intricately structured powdered wigs bedecked with jewels, feathers, and ribbons that had been a sight to behold. A girl’s robe, over a corset, was voluminous, open from the waist down displaying an underskirt or petticoat, and needed to be colourful. There have been hooks and laces galore.
Maybe the one profit to come back from the French Revolution and its devastation was that it did assist curve excesses in vogue. Style extremes ended when the Estates Common convened in 1789, and a brand new vogue assertion quickly emerged. Three colours, blue, white, and pink grew to become de rigueur. French residents, excessive and low, felt compelled to put on the tri-color cockade, or knot of ribbons, on their hats.
From sizeable, powdered coiffures, girls adopted a pure hair shade, with curls forming intently across the face. Kinds had been simplified with clothes of 1 piece and in bizarre materials, comparable to cotton.
A Pure Magnificence
The portrait of the Comtesse de Sorcy (1790) by eminent artist of the day, Jacques-Louis David, offers us a younger lady who offered this easy but elegant model to perfection. The comtesse was one among two sisters and daughter of Swiss-born Parisian banker Jacques Rilliet. Each sisters married wealthy and titled husbands; Anne-Marie-Louise’s husband was additionally of Swiss ancestry.
The woman is dressed modestly in a easy white cotton robe and scarf with patterned edges. She sits comfortably on a pink velvet chair, towards a naked taupe backdrop. Her darkish blonde hair falls round her face highlighting her pure composure, stunning options, and sort expression.
The easy robe flows splendidly round her, due to the artist’s talent. The gentle tan scarf appears to mimic the wrap of her arms. From the scarf’s tip, the road flows upward to her shoulder, the place the main target continues round her hair that frames her face. How far she had come from the extremes of aristocratic costume. As famous in The Historical past of Artwork web site, the sisters “didn’t want to have their portraits to be too extravagant, carrying comparatively easy however good clothes which they’d have felt finest represented their very own characters.”
David painted within the classical model and was in demand as a portrait painter for rich aristocrats. He accepted this fee one 12 months after the revolution had begun simply because the nation’s political and social upheaval was gaining steam. Because the revolution wore on, it was not form to French elites. Most misplaced all the things, and in some circumstances, even their lives.
It has been mentioned that, for generations, French girls have cultivated their pure magnificence to perfection and the woman de Sorcy actually reveals it on this compelling portrait.
