Haute couture was born in France in the 18th century!
Eager to be the most beautiful queen in Europe, in 1774 Marie-Antoinette hired the services of the new fashion merchant, Mademoiselle Bertin.
The young entrepreneur from a modest family in Abbeville became the protégé of the Duchess of Chartres after making her wedding dress, embroidered with matte and shiny silver threads.
Its new boutique Au Grand Mogol, located on rue Saint-Honoré in Paris, employs around thirty workers.
Under the Ancien Régime, fashion merchants did not frame the dresses.
They take care of the “decorations.”
This ranges from adding ribbons and lace to hair accessories, including pelisses, muffs, purses, shoe jewelry...
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But for its sovereign, Rose Bertin goes far beyond.
She invents what we would call today… looks.
To better arouse the desire of her clients who are envious of the style of Marie-Antoinette, elevated to the rank of “model-influencer”, she constantly renews her collections.
Rose Bertin is not just a seller of frivolities.
She contributes to liberating women's bodies from the aristocracy.
When Marie-Antoinette arrives at Versailles, the ladies must wear court dress.
This consists of a body with whalebones, a sort of straightjacket which makes the chest plump, straightens the back and flattens the stomach thanks to a rigid triangular piece which goes down to the pubis.
On the waist thus maintained, we place a basket which gives volume to petticoats and skirts with trains.
The weight of the complete outfit sometimes exceeds ten kilos and is hard on the skeleton.
The Gaulle dress scandal
As the queen hated these sartorial constraints, Rose Bertin offered her Polish-style dresses, with a simple corset and ankle-length skirts thrown back by a fabric “ass”.
The body gains freedom of movement, a joy for Marie-Antoinette who participates in several balls per week.
At the beginning of the 1780s, the designer imagined the so-called “en gaulle” dresses.
These are long shirts made of white fabric – cotton, gauze or silk – tightened at the waist with a wide colored ribbon.
The silhouette is completed outdoors by a simple straw hat decorated with ribbons, flowers or feathers.
At the Petit Trianon, the queen's private domain, all the women wear this refined, country style.
But outside of this Eden, we cry scandal.
Being dressed in a gaulle dress or going naked, what's the difference?
Imagine Kate Middleton walking around in a nightie!
Rose Bertin's first haute couture label.
Alamy/ABACA
Rose Bertin charges an exorbitant price for her services: you have to pay for her raw materials, her labor and her label, although this term does not yet exist.
The queen spends the equivalent of a million euros per year at home.
While bread was often in short supply in Paris bakeries, Marie-Antoinette was criticized for emptying the state coffers into toilets and distractions.
Stigmatized as the queen's fashion merchant, Rose Bertin saw her business decline during the Revolution.
At the start of the First Empire, she would become an icon that all young designers would wish to surpass, exactly as Gabrielle Chanel would be after the Second World War.
With one difference, and not the least: today, who remembers Rose Bertin?
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