Kate Berridge Read Online Free Page A

Long before she acquired her own legendary showroom she served her apprenticeship at Trait Galant. And before the ravishingly pretty young Jeanne Bécu became Madame Du Barry and the mistress of Louis XV, with perks that turned her life into a perpetual shopping trip, that was where she trimmed hats and tended customers. Madame Du Barry–shown languid, long-necked and delectable on a daybed–was one of Curtius’s earliest and most popular figures on public display. One of the wax portraits which Marie brought with her to England, this model can still be seen. When it was first shown, the sex life of the King was a topic of great interest, and there was a particular frisson in being able to get up close to a recumbent model of his mistress and indulge in salacious speculation in earshot but not hearing of her delicate waxen lobes.
    After the rustic charms of Berne, a city of clogs and lederhosen and women with plaits, Marie as a little girl was plunged into a society where noble women wore wide hooped-skirts called panniers, towering wigs, and shoes designed not to be walked in. Madame de La Tour du Pin (born Henrietta-Lucy Dillon) whose journal spanning the demise of Louis XVI to the restoration of the monarchy is a brilliantly illuminating social history of this period, recalled ‘narrow heels, three inches high, which held the foot in a similar position to when standing on tiptoe to reach the highest shelf in the library’. How strange these upper-class constrictions of high heels, high hair andheavy skirts must have seemed to the gimlet-eyed child, whose keen powers of observation took in every detail. The restrictions of dress underscored the privileges of aristocratic indolence, and from early childhood Marie must have quickly grasped the gulf between classes as she contrasted the exotic immobility of the grand dames carried in sedan chairs or conveyed in fine carriages that came and went from the aristocratic enclave that was where de Conti first housed his protégée in Paris to the heaving bustle of street life and the coarse realities of the crowd that she and her mother had to brave as they familiarized themselves with the city.
    For a curious child it was probably hard not to stare at the vivid vermilion cheeks, painted in garish circles, that were another affectation of aristocratic women. The more refined the woman, the more artificial the look: a natural blush, with associations of the flush of boudoir exertion, was suspect, and a lack of cosmetic colouring–too little make-up–could get a woman labelled a courtesan. The aristocrats lived in a world far removed from the mêlée of the masses, yet it was increasingly a world aped by the rising ranks of the middle classes. Advertisers cottoned on to aspiration as a selling point, as is evident from the marketing of such products as Rouge de la Reine and Savonette de la Cour.
    Small-print advertisements from the papers of the day are like a spyhole on the preoccupations of the Paris that Marie knew. Columns are crammed with endless products to enhance the human canvas–paint and pomade, teeth-whitening and-strengthening products, hair dyes, wig-adhesives. Bear grease was regarded as a luxury hair conditioner–one brand was advertised as being made in America ‘by the savages of Louisiana’. The importance attached to appearances was remarked upon by the American lawyer and man of letters Gouverneur Morris, who noted, ‘They know a wit by his snuffbox, a man of taste by his bow, and a statesman by the cut of his coat.’
    The importance attached to appearances undermined the former deference, and, as the force of fashion grew, it was as if a veneer of superficiality was being laid over the old order. Indicative of this was the way that feathers–traditionally associated with ceremonial dress and nodding plumes that commanded respect–became fashion accessories, and feather shops flourished. However,