Let Them Eat Cake...

Well if you don't know who i'm basing my project on from the title of this post then you have been living under a rock....

yes it is Marie Antoinette - the queen of excess, the queen of fashion, the queen of decadence, elegance, opulance, innocence....Innocence i hear you all repeat to yourself.
Yes - was this women really a political pawn or was she just a damsel in distress?



There are many things about Marie Antoinette that majorly get my creative juices flowing...Her decadent Petit Trianon - first given to Madame de Pompadour then Madame du Barry ( all royal mistresses respectfully )
This was hers to do with whatever she wanted - which caused a lot of controversy at court - a 19yr old queen having not only her own quarters but her own house and subsequent areas. It is rumoured that even her husband King Louis XVI could only enter with invitation.



On first arrival at Versaille she refused to wear her very restricting Whalebone Corset, it was only with strong persuasion that she wore it again due to small talk and gossip with the court about her behaviours.
She wasn't one for Court etiquette and would avoid it like the plague resulting in frequent stays at the petit trianon and eventually the Hameau De La Reine which was a rustic retreat built especially for Marie Antoinette.

Here, it was said, the Queen and her attendants would dress as sherperdesses and milkmaids. Particularly docile, hand-picked cows would be cleaned. These cows would be milked by the ladies, with porcelain milk churns painted to imitate wood specially made by the royal porcelain manufactory at Sévres.
This is what interests me the most about Marie Antoinette - her constant wanting to escape, to have freedom, to dress as a milkmaid or sheprdess, no restraints.
This is where my main inspiration will start - i want to design something that could be worn by the most elegant, richest whatever person but i want it to be understated beauty - simple and elegant.

Dame Vivienne Westwood

With her title - if we wanna be technical i could base this project on the great Dame Vivienne Westwood - could be a true rags to riches story.
ok enough joking!

This women has done exstensive collections with hints to royalty and decadence and misplaced elegance.
Here are a couple at a quick glance
Harris Tweed


Harris Tweed was inspired by Westwood’s memories of the clothes worn by the young Princesses Margaret and Elizabeth. The Queen had already been the object of Westwood's attention during her Silver Jubilee in 1977, when her image adorned t-shirts sporting a safety pin through her nose. Ten years on, however, the antagonistic jibe at the establishment was gone, giving way to an affectionate parody of that most English of ladies and heralding a return to the traditional fit of English tailoring.
Mini Crini


The Mini-Crini collection saw an increasingly shaped look, the antithesis of the masculine shoulder pads and tight hip styles that were current in the 1980s. Westwood's historical research had led her to believe that clothes were about 'changing the shape of the body, about having a restriction'. She now wanted to 'make things that fitted'.

Inspired by the ballet Petrushka, Westwood devised a 'mini-crini' that combined the tutu with an abbreviated form of the Victorian crinoline.

These collections helped me to see how inspiration from royalty may not end up with a typical cliché gorgeous ball gown with frills galore, but how a simple statement can make a big impact

Royal Privacy Gagging Row

The Duke of Edinburgh's attempt to ban the media from reporting on the private lives of the Royals means that in future, newspapers may be prevented from printing the sort of scoops which have for decades helped define our view of the first family.
Stories about the extramarital affairs of Diana, Princess of Wales and the Prince of Wales would have remained secret, meaning the public would not have found out about Princess Diana's relationship with the cavalry officer James Hewitt, or heard the "Squidgygate tapes" of her long, romantic conversations with another boyfriend, James Gilbey.

Lawyers would also have been able to argue that Prince Charles's affair with Camilla Parker Bowles was a private matter, though newspapers could have retorted that the constitutional implications of the future king cheating on the future queen were a matter of public interest.


Such a defence would have been unlikely to succeed, however, in the case of paparazzi photographs of a topless Duchess of York having her toes sucked by the American tycoon John Bryan whilst she was still married to the Duke of York, meaning the pictures would never have seen the light of day.
I think this is an interesting thing to look at - Privacy.
Monarchy since the dawn of them have always been in the public eye and a lot of time the information relayed back to the pulib is what ultimately made them or broke them - i think this aspect would be interesting to look at further back in history when public opinion could lead to severe smearing of names and even death penalties.

Royal Decadence

Time to get back into the blogging game
so lets jump right into it.

I already know who i want to base my final garment on, but obviously i have a sketchbook to fill so why not start by researching about British Royalty since afterall, i am british.
Known for Ascot / Princess Diana / Doulton / Wedgwood / Buckingham Palace etc....the list goes on.

The first part of this project began just before we broke up for the summer holidays - the college trip to Kensington Palace where there was an exhibition called "Enchanted Princess" if i remember correctly or "Enchanted Palace" something along them lines...
Anyway this composed of different rooms devoted to different princesses and some if not all became queens.
this was took in the room of royal sorrows along with a story about a princess who would catch her tears in glass jears and the significance of them evaporating would be that her sorrow would evaporate (dissapear ) too. There was also the Dress Of Tears by Aminaka Wilmont:
It's funny because while i was at this exhibition i never noticed the beauty of this garment and how relevant and similar it is too my own thoughts for my version of this royal brief.
In all this was a good starting base for this project - i didn't find much else which inspired me because i'm not fully interested in British History to be honest, but it's great sketchbook filler!