Cecil Beaton, who captured the official coronation portraits, described how the combination of sumptuous gown, ceremonial robes and Crown Jewels imbued her with a "Byzantine magnificence." But such opulence was not purely gratuitous. Throughout history it has served an important constitutional purpose: to reinforce the status of the monarch and distinguish them from the people and palaces that surround them. The Queen’s clothes needed to ensure she looked as she should: like a Queen. Couture Queen Soon though she is sparkling with the other young girls in court, nobody over thirty should be at court are among her brightest opinions. The story of Marie Antoinette is very well told, by Caroline Weber, it shows the child Marie Antoinette was ,and the game way she stepped up to this great alliance knowing all she represented. Her entrance in her silver gown into the palace of Versailles, a daughter of the Caesars, beneath the Apollo ceiling, and before the goatish king her new father in law, all that is beautifully told. As is the poor girls experience of of the court arriving in her bedchamber to observe herself and her buffoon bridegroom on the point of (hopefully) coitus. 'She blushed and hide herself under the gold embroidered bedspread. And there was no sex. We know this because her sheets were inspected next morning.' Ms Kelly – who has the same size feet as the Queen – wears in the monarch’s handmade new shoes beforehand to ensure they are comfortable when first used. She was not to be subjected to any ugly people and so only beautiful faces were sent out to greet her.

Perhaps says the author of this book this was ‘ in retaliation for those scenes of appalling aristocratic coldheartedness that the insurgents vowed to make the white haired white skinned, well dressed princess suffer- Lamballe through her brutal death and ritual coiffing , and the Queen through a forced encounter with her friends savagely styled head..’Rose whose millinery bills will be eye watering figures and whose shop is patronised by all the frivolous women who want to look and dress like the Dauphine. Silly women make their way to her in droves but like to secure their goods with a proper semblance of humility from the little milliner, when she is sometimes impetuous and spirited, just because she is a drab with gifted fingers and an eye for elaborate frippery does not mean she should not know her place! She takes her place in this wonderland of pouf creation and extravagance that will bring down the Austrian daughter of the Caesar's. They granted the hooligans permission to make the tour of the prison with Madame De lamballes head on the condition they left the corpse at the door’ There was a change for Rousseau like simplicity in fashion, and the Sillies all became rustics. Shepherdesses with jaunty hats and simple muslins, not a stay or deeply torturing corset upon any of them.

The immensity of her power, is something to consider, when you think of of the consequence for the Dauphine, Rose in her flounces with her pretty face, a good bosom, is though constantly reminded to know her place. This book should definitely be read after one reads Antonia Fraser's "Marie Antoniette: A Journey." This is not a definitive biography, nor does it claim to be. However, it looks at the ill-fated queen in a unique and textual way- through the clothing choices she made at every juncture in her tenure as Dauphine, and later Queen of France. Amidst all the books on Marie Antoinette that I've acquired over the years (for reasons which are both curious and somewhat unknown to me!), Caroline Weber's "Queen of Fashion" has figured high on my list. I decided to re-read it once more, because I can't get enough of Caroline Weber's amazing writing style and depth into the world of fashion of that time period. She does a wonderful job explaining how Marie Antoinette used fashion to gain acceptance and approval in the French Court. Also, she does a dazzling job bringing all the clothes to life. This is a dazzling book about fashion and how it was used in every day life. Marie Antoinette has always stood as an icon of supreme style, but surprisingly none of her biographers have paid sustained attention to her clothes. In Queen of Fashion, Caroline Weber shows how Marie Antoinette developed her reputation for fashionable excess, and explains through lively, illuminating new research the political controversies that her clothing provoked. Weber surveys Marie Antoinette's "Revolution in Dress," covering each phase of the queen's tumultuous life, beginning with the young girl, struggling to survive Versailles's rigid traditions of royal glamour (twelve-foot-wide hoopskirts, whalebone corsets that crushed her organs). As queen, Marie Antoinette used stunning, often extreme costumes to project an image of power and wage war against her enemies. Gradually, however, she began to lose her hold on the French when she started to adopt "unqueenly" outfits (the provocative chemise) that, surprisingly, would be adopted by the revolutionaries who executed her.This was an exceptional biography of Marie Antoinette with fashion as a decoding device akin to an anthropological device used in ethnography. More than any other treatment of Marie Antoinette this thoroughly researched work really set her in an historic cultural framework. Moreover, there was no glossing over the less attractive behaviors and attitudes of our heroine. Instead they are presented as all too human foibles exacerbated by the stultifying and constricted world of the French court amid socio-political crisis and change. There were masked balls, she donned a domino, into her company came notorious court seducers and in the company she kept in her small world was not of the court, spies were routed. I feel that a lot of the book was a stretch--the brand-new Dauphine notices a tapestry of Jason and Medea, calls it a "bad omen" for a wedding, and we assume that it plants in her mind the idea to manipulate fashion for power? Yeah, probably not.

When they took Mops from her the one attachment of her grieving heart, she had only them to look too for affection, and was reminded when she burst into tears and flung herself into the arms of one of them , that there would be no more display of tears. She was only a girl, no matter how you look at it, and what she was freighted to carry. The Dauphine's first act of defiance, a 15-year-old's strop, was her refusal to wear the grand corps, the rigid corset permitted only to the court elite. Her second was to learn to ride, and don not only male-style upper-body garments (nothing novel about that, female royals and courtiers had galloped about in similar equine fig since the 1660s), but to wear, and be painted in, breeches, while astride the saddle. Hunting Frenchwomen hid "culottes" under skirts; only the awesome Catherine the Great of Russia and comic actresses flaunted their lower limbs in breeches. Tiny weights are also put into daywear hemlines in case of windy weather, and fabrics that crumple or could potentially develop messy loose strands are avoided.

Off duty, the Queen likes to dress for country life in a blouse and A-line skirt with a green waxed or quilted coat or a rain mac, her wellies and her familiar silk scarf knotted under her chin.

About her spending she could not be persuaded but her brother did successful harangue her husband a talk that was so scorching and so rough perhaps, that after his departure, the' laxical bridegroom made it atop his bride, and a year later she conceived a child'. Her spending was enormous and nobody could dissuade her from it. The poufs were also home to little creatures, vermin took up nests in them, and there were special long combs for scratching your pouf if the vermin were too lively.At nursing or residential homes, the Queen wears strong colours to help those who are visually impaired, and on walkabouts, the crown and brim of her hat will be taken into account. Ms Kelly is now the Queen’s in house go-to designer for day and evening wear, and often uses Swarovski crystals to add glamour to grand royal occasions. Trips to Canada featured red and white ensembles in tribute to the Canadian flag, along with her diamond maple leaf brooch, while her first high-profile and diplomatically sensitive visit to Ireland saw the monarch choose green – the Republic’s national colour.