Liberty Equality Fashion

March 1, 2024
How three women made indelible marks on fashion and feminism during the French Revolution. Higonnet, a professor of art history at Barnard, crafts a comprehensive profile of the Three Graces, Frenchwomen who changed the face of fashion throughout the late 18th century. Frustrated with the constraints of the age, each of these women defied previously set European sumptuary laws and dress codes and embraced shopping and self-made fashion trends accentuating the female form. Jos�phine Bonaparte, future empress of France and a woman with Creole roots, combined the Black cultural flare of Martinique with Indian style to create a "fairy-tale wardrobe" of diaphanous dresses awash in color and flare and redingotes that trod the tabooed edges of androgyny. Higonnet also shares the provocative story of European beauty T�r�zia Tallien, confined to a family-arranged marriage at 14 to achieve French nobility and jailed for a month after being arrested in an "edifice of conical bone stays, layered petticoats, and a three-piece silken gown." Juliette R�camier was also relocated to urban France "to be restyled" and eventually became a socialite and intellectual muse enamored with transforming the landscape of Parisian fashion. The women's collective attires exuded power, sexual seduction, social superiority, and counterrevolutionary defiance. Higonnet generously illustrates the book with polychromatic line drawings and full-color oil paintings of the trio, their striking taste in textiles and accessories, and the evolution of their lavish apparel throughout a period in history when much of Europe became seduced with "beauty leveraged by courage and style." In this ideal text for fashion course curriculums and students of fashion history, Higonnet demonstrates her meticulous research in energetic prose that vibrantly captures the lives of these three revolutionary champions of chic European finery and women's liberation. A passionately rendered history of three "style mavericks" who ushered in a defining fashion revolution.

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Starred review from March 11, 2024
Three women who “decapitate aristocratic style” in revolutionary France take center stage in this impressive account from Barnard art history professor Higonnet (Berthe Morisot). Tracing how from 1789 to 1804 these “three graces” (so-called at the time for their stylishness) eschewed restrictive, elaborate garments in favor of simple, straight, unstructured dresses, Higonnet contends that this style shift was a bold expression of revolutionary freedom. The most well-known “grace,” Marie Joséphine Rose Tascher de La Pagerie (later Joséphine Bonaparte, wife of Napoleon), drew fashion inspiration from women of color in Martinique, where she grew up, and broke “barriers in women’s clothing history” that were “five hundred years old” by wearing one-piece dresses in lieu of the two-piece combo of skirt and bodice. Also profiled are Térézia Tallien, who used the seductive power of clothing to ensnare powerful men and finagle for herself “unprecedented celebrity” and power in the Directory era (she was a key architect behind the overthrow of Robespierre), and Juliette Récamier, who “trademarked absolute whiteness” as a symbol of virginity after a marriage to her rumored biological father made it necessary for her to prove they weren’t actually sleeping together. As rigorous as it is fun, Higonnet’s narrative takes many insightful detours, from close readings of the era’s paintings to an overview of how colonial trade transformed France’s economy. It’s a captivating case study of fashion’s provocative role in politics.