Salon visitors demanded the portrait be removed from public view, but the damage was already done. These women were both already controversial figures to the people of France, and while their choice of cotton gowns stirred up some level of dissent, it was nothing compared to the uproar that exploded when Marie’s cotton-gown portrait was put on exhibition at the Salon of the Académie Royale.Īnother Vigée-Lebrun painting of Marie Antoinette. Within the French court alone, Vigée Le Brun painted a few aristocratic ladies in the gauzy gowns, including Madame du Barry in 1781 and the Duchess de Polignac, one of Marie Antoinette’s closest friends, in 17. She was by no means the first to be depicted wearing the provincial cotton dress that typified life at the Petit Trianon. It is not surprising that Marie Antoinette would choose to be painted in the fashion she wore in her private oasis. That all changed as cotton began to rise. Shortly after the American Revolution, the Northern states outlawed slavery one by one, and for a brief time, it looked as though the Southern states might do the same. While slavery certainly existed in the United States at the time of Marie Antoinette, its future was uncertain. Much of the American agricultural industry in its infancy was supported by indentured servants. Native Americans grew cotton in what would become the Southern United States for centuries, and as the colonists took over the New World, they too grew small amounts of cotton, but very little was exported. They left their stiff silks behind in favor of light muslins and brightly patterned cotton chintz and indiennes.Īt this point in time, the vast majority of cotton came from India (hence “indiennes”), and thanks to the East India Company, it was spread across Europe. Naturally, this extended to their clothing. Marie and her ladies would go there to step away from their lavish lifestyles and enjoy a simpler existence, undisturbed by the scrutiny and expectations of the court. She was given complete control of the estate even the king could not enter if she did not invite him. The Petit Trianon was Marie’s personal escape.
When Marie’s husband, Louis XVI, ascended to the throne in 1774, he gifted Marie with the Petit Trianon, an idyllic chateau on the grounds of Versailles first occupied by Louis XV’s mistress, Madame du Barry. She was not the first to wear the over-the-top styles she was simply in a position to take them to levels with which even the most privileged members of the aristocracy could not compete. Marie Antoinette dressed as she was expected to, in the finest French silks with jewels fit for a future queen.
Versailles was home to the most lavish halls and grounds imaginable, and the people who occupied it dressed to match. When Marie Antoinette was sent to France to marry the dauphin at just 15 years old, she entered a world of extraordinary opulence. It caused cotton, and the institution of slavery it stood on, to explode. It flipped the textile industry on its head, lighting the fuse laid out by a fast-changing world of exploration, Enlightenment, and rebellion. Despite its humble appearance, though, Marie Antoinette’s portrait in the plain cotton dress had an impact that reverberated through the world in ways no one could have foreseen. The gown gives off “an aesthetic of rustic simplicity,” writes Katy Werlin in Clothing and Fashion: American Fashion F rom Head to Toe.
The scene is refreshingly natural when compared to the ornateness of the typical Rococo-era portrait. The painting has a graceful and arcadian feel to it, at least to the modern eye. She doesn’t wear any jewels or embellishments, just a wide-brimmed straw hat tied with a ribbon band, topped with a few relatively modest plumes.
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Full sleeves and a softly ruffled neckline add volume to the otherwise unstructured shape. The thin white fabric is airy and loose, cinched at the waist with a sheer golden sash. In 1783, portrait artist Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun painted Marie Antoinette in a simple cotton gown known as a robe de gaulle. Marie Antoinette en chemise, 1783 portrait by Louise Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun.