Queen of Fashion

Author: Caroline Weber
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
ISBN: 1429936479
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 452

Book Description
In this dazzling new vision of the ever-fascinating queen, a dynamic young historian reveals how Marie Antoinette's bold attempts to reshape royal fashion changed the future of France 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. Weber's queen is sublime, human, and surprising: a sometimes courageous monarch unwilling to allow others to determine her destiny. The paradox of her tragic story, according to Weber, is that fashion—the vehicle she used to secure her triumphs—was also the means of her undoing. Weber's book is not only a stylish and original addition to Marie Antoinette scholarship, but also a moving, revelatory reinterpretation of one of history's most controversial figures.

Inside the Royal Wardrobe

Author: Kate Strasdin
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1474269958
Category : Design
Languages : en
Pages : 261

Book Description
Queen Alexandra used clothes to fashion images of herself as a wife, a mother and a royal: a woman who both led Britain alongside her husband Edward VII and lived her life through fashion. Inside the Royal Wardrobe overturns the popular portrait of a vapid and neglected queen, examining the surviving garments of Alexandra, Princess of Wales – who later became Queen Consort – to unlock a rich tapestry of royal dress and society in the second half of the 19th century. More than 130 extraordinary garments from Alexandra's wardrobe survive, from sumptuous court dress and politicised fancy dress to mourning attire and elegant coronation gowns, and can be found in various collections around the world, from London, Oslo and Denmark to New York, Toronto and Tokyo. Curator and fashion scholar Kate Strasdin places these garments at the heart of this in-depth study, examining their relationships to issues such as body politics, power, celebrity, social identity and performance, and interpreting Alexandra's world from the objects out. Adopting an object-based methodology, the book features a range of original sources from letters, travel journals and newspaper editorials, to wardrobe accounts, memoirs, tailors' ledgers and business records. Revealing a shrewd and socially aware woman attuned to the popular power of royal dress, the work will appeal to students and scholars of costume, fashion and dress history, as well as of material culture and 19th century history.

Our Rainbow Queen

Author: Sali Hughes
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0593086252
Category : Photography
Languages : en
Pages : 210

Book Description
A full-spectrum collection of photos of the late Queen Elizabeth II—spanning ten decades of fashion and every color of the rainbow. This riotously colorful book takes a prismatic journey through a century of styles worn by British Monarch Queen Elizabeth II. Each photo is gloriously accessorized with captions and commentary by journalist and broadcaster Sali Hughes, who provides fascinating context. Readers will learn how the Queen used color and fashion in strategic and discreetly political ways, such as wearing the colors of the European flag to a post-Brexit meeting or a pin given to her by the Obamas to a meeting with Donald Trump. With stunning photographs that span feature brilliant colors ranging from the dusky pinks the Queen wore in girlhood through to the neon green dress that prompted the hashtag #NeonAt90, this must-have collection celebrates the iconic fashion statements of the UK's longest reigning and most vibrant monarch. This is a joyful celebration of the Queen’s life, as well as her personal style and political mastery.

Liberty or Death

Author: Peter McPhee
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300219504
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 420

Book Description
A strinking account of the impact of the French Revolution in Paris, across the French countryside, and around the globe The French Revolution has fascinated, perplexed, and inspired for more than two centuries. It was a seismic event that radically transformed France and launched shock waves across the world. In this provocative new history, Peter McPhee draws on a lifetime’s study of eighteenth-century France and Europe to create an entirely fresh account of the world’s first great modern revolution—its origins, drama, complexity, and significance. Was the Revolution a major turning point in French—even world—history, or was it instead a protracted period of violent upheaval and warfare that wrecked millions of lives? McPhee evaluates the Revolution within a genuinely global context: Europe, the Atlantic region, and even farther. He acknowledges the key revolutionary events that unfolded in Paris, yet also uncovers the varying experiences of French citizens outside the gates of the city: the provincial men and women whose daily lives were altered—or not—by developments in the capital. Enhanced with evocative stories of those who struggled to cope in unpredictable times, McPhee’s deeply researched book investigates the changing personal, social, and cultural world of the eighteenth century. His startling conclusions redefine and illuminate both the experience and the legacy of France’s transformative age of revolution. “McPhee…skillfully and with consummate clarity recounts one of the most complex events in modern history…. [This] extraordinary work is destined to be the standard account of the French Revolution for years to come.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Style & Splendor

Author: Anne Kjellberg
Publisher: Victoria & Albert Museum
ISBN:
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 120

Book Description
Showcases garments now in the collection of the National Museum of Art/Museum of Decorative Arts and Design in Oslo, an sets them in the context of Queen Maud's life and times.

The Queen's Wardrobe

Author: Julia Golding
Publisher: Pan Macmillan
ISBN: 1529051258
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 41

Book Description
The story of Queen Elizabeth II, who famously said ‘if I wore beige, no one would know who I was’, told through her clothes and jewellery. The Queen’s Wardrobe is a gorgeous gift to treasure, celebrating a long life devoted to service. This book tells the story of a young princess who grew into one of the world's best-loved and longest-serving royals, touching on wartime truck-fixing, ration-book wedding dress making, splendid gowns, the Crown Jewels, and her trusty wellies. Includes a foreword by Michele Clapton, costume designer for series one of Netflix's The Crown, giving a peek behind the scenes at the recreation of some of the Queen's most famous outfits. Written by the Waterstones Children's Book Prize-winning Julia Golding, The Queen's Wardrobe is full of fascinating stories from the long life of our record-breaking Queen. The detailed and colourful artwork from bestselling Kate Hindley shows what it's really like to grow up as a princess.

The Queen of Paris

Author: Pamela Binnings Ewen
Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
ISBN: 1982546948
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 359

Book Description
Legendary fashion designer Coco Chanel is revered for her sophisticated style—the iconic little black dress—and famed for her intoxicating perfume Chanel No. 5. Yet behind the public persona is a complicated woman of intrigue, shadowed by mysterious rumors. The Queen of Paris, the new novel from award-winning author Pamela Binnings Ewen, is fiction based on facts, some uncovered only within the past few years, and vividly imagines the hidden life of Chanel during the four years of Nazi occupation in Paris in the midst of WWII. Coco Chanel could be cheerful, lighthearted, and generous; she also could be ruthless, manipulative, even cruel. Against the winds of war, with the Wehrmacht marching down the Champs-Élysées, Chanel finds herself residing alongside the Reich’s High Command in the Hotel Ritz. Surrounded by the enemy, Chanel wages a private war of her own to wrestle full control of her perfume company from the hands of her Jewish business partner, Pierre Wertheimer. With anti-Semitism on the rise, he has escaped to the United States with the confidential formula for Chanel No. 5. Distrustful of his intentions to set up production on the outskirts of New York City, Chanel fights to seize ownership. The House of Chanel shall not fall. While Chanel struggles to keep her livelihood intact, Paris sinks under the iron fist of German rule. Chanel—a woman made of sparkling granite—will do anything to survive. She will even agree to collaborate with the Nazis in order to protect her darkest secrets. When she is covertly recruited by Germany to spy for the Reich, she becomes Agent F-7124, code name: Westminster. But why? And to what lengths will she go to keep her stormy past from haunting her future?

The Queen of Style

Author: Caralyn Buehner
Publisher: Dial
ISBN:
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 40

Book Description
Queen Sophie rules a small, happy kingdom of farmers, but she herself isn’t happy. Nobody ever comes to her with a problem, and she is bored to tears . . . until she spots an ad for the Royal College of Beauty correspondence course. Soon she is memorizing directions and practicing her lessons in a frenzy. She starts writing proclamations, demanding that her subjects come to the castle so that she can cut and curl and color their hair. Even the sheep must be coiffed. It’s not long before Sophie finds herself facing an angry—though very stylish!—mob.A playful, funny fairy tale with a decidedly contemporary sensibility, The Queen of Stylehas all the vibrancy and wit we’ve come to expect from this husband-and-wife team, the creators of the New York Timesbestselling Snowmen at Night.

Queen Elizabeth's Wardrobe Unlock'd

Author: Janet Arnold
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000161102
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 1025

Book Description
This book provides photographs of portraits, miniatures, tomb sculptures, engravings, woven textiles and embroideries of clothes found in the wardrobe of Queen Elizabeth. It is an invaluable reference for students of the history of dress and embroidery, for social historians and art historians.

The Queen: 70 Years of Majestic Style

Author: Bethan Holt
Publisher: Ryland Peters & Small
ISBN: 9781788795265
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
The past 70 years have seen a 25-year-old princess transform into a nonagenarian monarch who was respected and loved the world over. A woman whose views were never heard, Queen Elizabeth II deployed fashion as a means to communicate and signal her position to the crowds who gathered to see her in public and the millions who watched her television broadcasts: “I must be seen to be believed,” she said. The Queen’s evolving attitude to dress reflected a visual landscape that started as genteel reportage in black and white and over the years developed into a 24/7 live-streamed news cycle, flashed around the world in seconds and driven by social media. Through it all, Elizabeth II’s style was an extension of all she represented as Queen; it was stoical and cautious yet dazzling and majestic. The Queen: 70 Years of Majestic Style celebrates the fashion evolution of Elizabeth II and takes a look at an unrivalled archive of unique fashion moments that bear testament to the care and consideration the Queen took in looking the part for a role like no other.