18th Century Fashion and Etiquette at Versailles (Dressed Classic)

Summary

Dressed: The History of Fashion

Episode: 18th Century Fashion and Etiquette at Versailles (Dressed Classic)
Release Date: September 5, 2025
Hosts: April Callahan & Cassidy Zachary

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Episode Overview

In this engaging episode, April and Cassidy transport listeners to the sumptuous world of 18th-century Versailles, offering a primer on the intricate intertwining of fashion and etiquette at the French royal court. The discussion highlights how dress functioned as more than mere adornment—it was a tool of political control, a symbol of status, and, at times, a matter of survival. They break down the layers (literal and social) that defined court attire for both men and women, share the ritualistic nature of dressing at Versailles, and reflect on the enduring influence of this era in fashion history.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Political Power of Fashion at Versailles

• Versailles as the Epicenter: Versailles was the ultimate stage for displaying extravagant fashions and wealth (01:16–02:12).
• Dress as National Wealth: King Louis XIV’s minister, Colbert, called fashion “to France what the gold mines of Peru are to Spain,” highlighting its economic and political importance (03:18, April).
• Fashion and Nationalism: French aristocrats were expected to buy and wear French-made garments to support the national economy. Importing or wearing foreign textiles was frowned upon (10:21–11:13).

Etiquette as Social Control

• Elaborate Rituals: Ceremonies like the grand lever (the king’s morning routine) and couché (his bedtime ritual) kept courtiers busy, reinforcing the king’s central power and creating a hierarchical system where access itself was a privilege (08:38–09:49).
• Dress and Rank: Even small tasks (like handing the king a napkin or dressing the queen) were tightly regulated by status and etiquette, as recounted in anecdotes like Marie Antoinette’s infamous dressing ritual (07:02–08:00).

What Did People Actually Wear?

• Men’s Fashion:

  • Abit Francais: Three-piece suits including a vest/waistcoat, coat, and breeches (14:25).
  • No underwear was typical; a long shirt served as the base layer (14:25–15:08).
  • Stockings and Calves: Well-formed calves were a status symbol—enhanced by elaborate stockings, diamond buckles, or even calf pads (15:32–16:50).
  • Ornamental Attire: Men wore floral motifs, pastels, sequins, velvet, lace, jewelry, and even high heels—a marked contrast to later gender norms (17:05–18:27).

• Women’s Fashion:

  • Robe à la Française and Robe à l’Anglaise: Open-front gowns, distinguished by back pleating or tailoring (19:15–19:55).
  • Layered Dressing: Chemise, stockings, petticoats, stays (corsets), wide panniers (hoops), stomacher, and then the gown itself—a lengthy and communal process (19:15–26:04).
  • Textile Value: Fabrics were precious commodities, often refashioned and reused, and vast quantities of luxurious materials signaled high social standing (26:51–27:49).
  • Court Dress: Required specifics like lace “engageants” and a train, and the formality was dictated by the event, not the hour (29:05–30:04).

Dress as a Weapon and Burden

• Exclusivity and Privilege: Certain materials, trims, and accessories were restricted to the king, royal family, or specially honored individuals (30:15–31:40).
• “Honored” Discomfort: The higher a woman’s rank, the more uncomfortable her corset (grand corps), underscoring fashion as a literal and figurative constraint (31:40–32:24, Cassidy).
• Political Dimensions: Fashion was a tool for social control—enforcing hierarchy and even draining the funds of potential rivals, but also a point of vulnerability, as seen in the revolutionary backlash against aristocratic opulence (33:26–33:48).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Fashion’s Economic Impact:
  “Fashion is to France what the gold mines of Peru are to Spain.”
  — Jean Baptiste Colbert, quoted by April (03:18)

• On the Functions of Etiquette:
  “It was designed and implemented to keep the king’s courtiers busy. The busier they were executing his daily dictates and routines, the less of a political threat they posed to his reign.” — Cassidy (08:38)

• On Marie Antoinette’s Annoyance:
  “[Marie Antoinette was left] standing there naked waiting for the specific person who was supposed to be entitled to hand her undergarments... and basically at the end of the whole scene, the Queen was like, very annoyed and very fed up.” — April (07:02)

• On Gender and Adornment:
  “Floral pastels, jewels, sequins, bright colors, plush velvets—they were all part and parcel to the male aristocratic wardrobe, as were high heels... In Europe, men wore high heels before women.” — Cassidy (17:05)

• On the Value of Textiles:
  “Textiles... could be incredibly valuable, given and received as gifts, and sometimes some of the more costly items that a person might own… Even Marie Antoinette had some of her own dresses refashioned because the textiles themselves were so intrinsically valuable.” — April (26:51)

• On Discomfort as Privilege:
  “Basically, the higher your rank at court, the more uncomfortable you’re ‘honored’ to be.” — April (32:24)

• On Fashion as Social Weapon:
  “Fashion and dress were wielded as forms of social control and politicized as markers of class and status… Fashion’s brightest star and its unhappiest victim.” — April (33:26)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 01:16 — Introduction: Setting the scene in 18th-century Versailles
• 03:18 — Colbert’s famous quote about French fashion
• 04:24–05:47 — Official support for fashion trades and Versailles expansion
• 07:02–08:09 — Marie Antoinette’s dressing ritual and frustrations with etiquette
• 08:38–09:49 — Purpose of etiquette: politics and control
• 10:21–11:13 — Nationalistic pressure to buy French fashion
• 13:43–14:25 — Breakdown: What men wore at Versailles
• 15:32–16:50 — The allure of men’s calves and creative enhancements
• 17:05–18:27 — Rich details of men’s decorative attire and its later gendering
• 19:15–20:28 — Women’s robe styles and the start of the dressing process
• 21:48–22:57 — The role and design of stays (early corsets)
• 25:35–26:51 — Final dressing steps and realities for women
• 27:49–28:16 — The symbolism and value of wide panniers and textiles
• 29:05–30:04 — Specifications and formalities of court attire
• 31:40–32:24 — Grand corps corsets and discomfort as status
• 33:26–33:48 — Conclusion: Fashion as control and class marker

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Further Resources & Related Episodes

• Marie Antoinette & Her Dressmaker: “Rose Fashion in the Reign of Marie Antoinette” with Kimberly Chrisman-Campbell (33:48)
• French Revolution & Fashion: Two-part episodes—“Fashion and Politics, the French Revolution” and “Subcultural Stylings: The Incroyables and Merveilleuses” (33:48)
• Upcoming: Next week’s deep dive “Corset Myths and Realities” with Cynthia of Red Threaded

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Final Reflection

April and Cassidy offer more than a fashion history lesson; their witty, insightful deconstruction of Versailles’ fashion culture spotlights the role of dress in both personal identity and statecraft. The episode leaves listeners reflecting on where “the power resides in your wardrobe” (34:23, April)—then and now.

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Find More:
Visual content for this episode is available on Instagram (@dressedpodcast) and Facebook (Dressed Podcast).
Browse their recommended fashion history books at bookshop.org/shop/dressed.

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Transcript

[April Callahan]

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Please enjoy one of our favorite episodes from the Dressed archive of over 500 plus shows. The history of Fashion is a production of dressed media. With over 8 billion people in the world, we all have one thing in common. Every day we all get dressed.

[April Callahan]

Welcome to Dressed the History of Fashion, a podcast that explores the who, what, when of why we wear. We are friends, fashion historians and your hosts April Callahan and Cassidy Zachary. Welcome back dress listeners. Today we are very happy to share with you our penultimate episode or our next to last episode covering our recent adventures in France. And one of the things that we did there, if you've already heard our Paris recap, is we spent an entire day with our fellow travelers at Versailles. I mean, come on Cass, is there anything more than splendorous in the minds of those of us who study fashion or study history or fashion history together than that specific period of unsurpassed artifice, extravagance and excess that was the Court of Versailles during the 18th century? I don't know. Just saying.

[Cassidy Zachary]

Yeah, I mean, for better or worse, it really was a significant moment in fashion history and one that I have often fantasized about heading back to and checking out and save for the extravagant art, architecture and lavish court which remains on partial and very controlled display. For visitors who visit the palace of Versailles today. Two major things that are lacking to truly experience what it would have been like to live at versailles during the 18th century are one obviously the French aristocracy are not there modeling the opulent fashions of the day as they would have been worn in court, and 2 the elaborate codes of etiquette which dictated their daily lives there. So those are things we are just going to have to imagine today. Today's episode is a bit of a primer, an intro, a one on one on fashion and etiquette at the court of Versailles. And far from being only an aesthetic pursuit, dress was this political game whereby sometimes what you wore was actually a matter of life or death.

[April Callahan]

Yes. And if that seems dramatic, it's because.

[Cassidy Zachary]

It was intended to be.

[April Callahan]

Yeah, very much so. Fashion in France at that time was taken very seriously. And in the late 17th century, King Louis XIV's influential Minister of state, Jean Baptiste Colbert, declared, quote, fashion is to France what the gold mines of Peru are to Spain. Yeah.

[Cassidy Zachary]

And I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that Colbert was not trying to say that fashion, like Spanish gold mining in Peru, was a colonial exploitive industry.

[April Callahan]

No, Correct. But basically, speaking on behalf of the French government, Colbert equated the French fashion industry to a gold mine. You know, a veritable cash cow, but one that was like this sort of indefatigable source of income. Because fashion is, of course, ever changing. There's a cycle of money that's being made. And with all of this money on the line, is it little wonder, then that the fashion trades really did play an integral role in Louis XIV and Colbert's plan to strengthen the nation's economy and status as a superpower?

[Cassidy Zachary]

And people say fashion doesn't matter.

[April Callahan]

Ha. Right.

[Cassidy Zachary]

During the late 17th and throughout the 18th century, France's government implemented a plan to support and grow its fashion purveyors and makers. They even went so far as to offer fiscal enticements to elite artisans from other countries to immigrate to France. So basically, people are bringing their skills and their technical expertise with them. So in France, you had lace makers, textile weavers and dye masters who found a welcome home. And there was no better setting for showing off their luxury wares in the royal pageantry that was Versailles.

[April Callahan]

Originally built in the 1630s as a hunting lodge and expanded by Louis XIII into a chateau, it was really his son, Louis xiv, who masterminded his expansion into the palace as we more or less know it today. And major building works there began in the 1660s. And it's really interesting to note here that the expansion of Versailles and also the government's official support of the fashion trades were projects that were established and executed concurrently. So if you're wondering if that was the plan kind of all along, well, perhaps it was because the Sun King ended up naming Versailles the main residence of the French court. And when he did this, he put in place these very elaborate etiquette codes in which dress played no small part.

[Cassidy Zachary]

So very generally speaking, these codes of etiquette governed behavior at court. And many of them applied specifically to governing the behavior of the aristocracies, AKA the courtiers who lived at court. So this complex system of rank dictated, for instance, who had the most access to the royal family. And this was in addition to, of course, the paid servants and staff who attended to daily operations of the 2,300 room palace. Let's just stop and think about that.

[April Callahan]

Wow.

[Cassidy Zachary]

So favored courtiers were bestowed with official titles and duties and salaries for the privilege to serve the royal family. They executed tasks like handing the King or Queen a napkin.

[April Callahan]

Yes. This is very important.

[Cassidy Zachary]

They stood by to refill their water and only water glasses when the public was invited to Versailles to watch the King and Queen eat. Yes. Pre TV entertainment. So which face. It was probably super awkward for many parties involved. But most relevant to our topic today, courtiers even held official positions which involved helping their sovereigns get dressed.

[April Callahan]

Yes. And I'm sure many of you out there have seen Sofia Coppola's wonderful, beautiful, heartbreaking movie, Marie Antoinette, in which Kirsten Dunst plays Marie Antoinette. And there's this scene in which she is naked and cold as all of these women are entering the room and pass around her chemise undergarment. Well, this was an actual event described by one of her ladies in waiting, Madame Campan, in her memoirs. And it's this actually almost comical scene where the Queen was standing there naked, waiting for the specific person who was supposed to be entitled to hand her undergarments. And then somebody else who outranked her came in and then it had to be passed. And this just kept happening around the room and some of the servants that were in the room had to pass them to somebody else because it was like a question of rank and etiquette. And. And basically at the end of the whole scene, the Queen was like, very annoyed and very fed up and was.

[Cassidy Zachary]

Like, how tiresome and how cold she was. Yeah, she's just like standing there naked, waiting for people to hand her her chemise.

[April Callahan]

Yeah. And you can understand why she would be irritated and not just with this particular incident, but all of these really incredibly elaborate rituals that were at court. One lady at court remarked, during the early part of the Queen's reign, quote, marie Antoinette preferred the title of Queen of Fashion to that of Queen of France. But that statement might not necessarily be as watertight as it seems because she was not a big fan of court etiquette or how it often governed what she could wear.

[Cassidy Zachary]

Absolutely not. And dress listeners, as some of this court etiquette seems picky, finicky, restrictive. It's because it was intentionally designed to be that way. It was designed and implemented to keep the king's courtiers busy. The busier they were executing his daily dictates and routines, the less of a political threat he thought that they posed to his reign. So, for instance, some of Louis XIV's mandates included formalizing his grand levee or getting out of bed. He required the entire court to be present outside his chambers for the ceremony, which occurred behind closed doors. The entire court?

[April Callahan]

Yeah.

[Cassidy Zachary]

And they couldn't even see it. And there was this additional petit levee ceremony wherein select favorite courtiers then entered the king's inner rooms to wait upon and dress him. And this is while everyone else is waiting outside, their access restricted from knowing or seeing anything that was happening.

[April Callahan]

Yeah. And in some kind of funny way, Cass, I guess you could equate this to when you go to a club and there's a velvet rope. Right. Or the VIP rooms of today, where you have to be tapped for special admission. You had to be a VIP to get into the king's inner chambers and help him get dressed.

[Cassidy Zachary]

What an honor.

[April Callahan]

Yeah. And just to make all of this extra, extra, there was also a similar ceremony for when the king went to bed, known as the couche. So it's this whole process happened again and reversed, and everybody and all these people were expecting. Expected to show up. So, you know, it's no wonder that he was known as the Sun King, because really, the court's entire schedule had him at the center of everything that they were doing morning, noon, and night. And that's what these systems of etiquette were put in place for, so he could keep tabs on them.

[Cassidy Zachary]

Having inherited their titles and family fortunes, a king's own courtiers were often his most likely challengers for the throne. And one way that French kings kept their courtiers vast wealth in check was through, you guessed it. Dress. So by setting this incredibly high standard in terms of expectations of what was to be worn at court, the monarch ensured that not only were potential political rivals depleting their personal funds in the pursuit of fashion, they were also patronizing French luxury purveyors, buying fine silks, laces, jewels, and other finery, really sending this infusion of cash straight into the country's economy. And this is one reason that wearing non French imported textiles or other fashion goods was really frowned upon at court. Buying French was viewed as a patriotic duty of the French aristocracy.

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[April Callahan]

So let's get to the nitty gritty, shall we? What exactly was being worn at court during the 18th century? Well, surprisingly, even though the pace of fashion quickened as the 18th century progressed, one visitor at the time noted in their diary that quote they invent every day new modes of dressing. Well, that being said, the actual types of garments were worn more or less stayed the same over the course of the 18th century. Men wore three piece suits and women largely wore sort of open front dresses that were paired with an outer petticoat or skirt. And I think we're going to elaborate on that a little bit, starting with the gentleman.

[Cassidy Zachary]

Yes. So attire for the aristocratic 18th century gentleman, what was it? Well, it was an abide francais comprised of three pieces, a vest or waistcoat and a coat and breeches which reach just below the knee with a base layer of course, of a long shirt or chemise which they tucked neatly between the legs. No underwear necessary.

[April Callahan]

People ask this all the time. People always have questions about underwear.

[Cassidy Zachary]

I know. And you know what? I planned a two part underwear episode and it got usurped by my four part unexpectedly long Olympic episode this summer. So I apologize, but it is on my list of episodes to write because it's a very fascinating topic.

[April Callahan]

Yes.

[Cassidy Zachary]

So men wearing drawers during the 18th century was not entirely unheard of, but it wasn't exactly typical either. So over this long shirt undergarment would be worn a pair of fall front breeches, so called because of a front panel which would fall open when unbuttoned at the sides. And these breeches, as mentioned, terminated just below the knee and were fastened with buttons, buckles or a combination of both.

[April Callahan]

And just a small note here, on knee breeches, obviously the breeches, if they terminated just below the knee, they were sure, so they didn't cover the lower legs. So knit stockings were worn and because of the very nature of the knit, they hugged the calf. And so I just love this so much. It was considered very alluring at this time to have well formed calves, maybe even kind of sexy. So some men chose to call attention to that general area of the calf by wearing diamond buckles to fasten their breeches at the bottom. You know, add a little bling down there to call attention to sexy calves. And of course you have the flip side because not everybody is going to have that desired fullness in their lower leg. And the, some of these gentlemen chose to adopt calf pads to give the illusion of a quote, well turned calf. And this could be achieved by wearing stockings with calf pads already sewn into the stockings. And this is the best part of all of this. There are more than a few cute anecdotes from around this area of mischievous children sneaking into dining rooms during dinner parties and crawling under the dining room table and using stick pins to prick the men's calves to see whose calves were real and whose were not.

[Cassidy Zachary]

And I, you have to wonder too, if people were like enticing children to go under the table and do that so they could see who was in fact not wearing.

[April Callahan]

I'm, I'm, I'm sure there was, there was an instigator of sorts more than a time or two.

[Cassidy Zachary]

So I'm actually glad you brought up the point of men wearing diamond jewelry in this manner, April, because as some of our listeners already know, the wearing of jewels, lace, floral motifs and other style devices. Well, I guess all of our listeners know this, right? It's, it's now largely gendered feminine. But this was not the case in the 18th century because floral pastels, jewels, sequins, bright colors, plush velvets, they were all part and parcel to the male aristocratic wardrobe, as were high heels, which is just such a wonderful snippet of fashion history. Louis xiv, of course, was renowned for high heels. We did a whole episode on the history of men in heels with Elizabeth Simmelhat, if you're interested in listening. But what's super interesting is that in Europe, men wore high heels before women.

[April Callahan]

Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

[Cassidy Zachary]

And women were lampooned for wearing heels as wearing mannish attire in the 17th century. So it's super interesting. Hills, of course, are not a European invention. They arrived at Europe at the turn of the 17th century. There were hundreds of years prior in western Asian countries in the horseback riding cultures. But Louis XIV really took these heels to incredible heights. And it really was not until the post revolutionary period that we see what has been referred to as the great male renunciation of decorative expression and dress. Yeah.

[April Callahan]

Because loosely speaking, it really wouldn't be until the 19th century that we see this change in, in menswear kind of denouncing all of these, quote unquote, what we think of now as feminine adornments and relegating those things like the pastels and the florals and the diamonds and you know, ultimately relegating that to, you know, this feminine sphere. I put that in quotes. And part of this all has to do with the French Revolution, when the aristocracy or the ancient regime was toppled. And all of a sudden, they're decadent displays of wealth. And the clothing that was identified with them, it was literally during the revolution, burned and ripped to shreds. And the aristocracy's clothing really became a symbol of their elitism and tyranny.

[Cassidy Zachary]

Yeah. Moving Forward into the 19th century.

[April Callahan]

Yes. Okay. For our 18th century aristocratic lady, the process of dressing was a tad more complicated. But one of her main looks at the corner of Versailles would have been been for the 18th century, woman @ court would have been an open front gown, such as the robe a la francaise or a robe a l'. Anglaise. And the difference between the two is really hard to tell from the front, but from the back, you automatically know which is which, because the robe a l' enfrancaise has that really pleated waterfall effect extending down from the center back. And the robe a l' anglaise lacked that draping panel. And it's. Instead, the back was very kind of tailored and fitted. And a woman would start her dressing process with a long linen chemise undergarment, just like her gentleman counterparts. Then she would put on her knee high knit stockings, which would have been secured by tying a ribbon just above the knee. No elastic hair, friends. We gotta secure them with something. And then she would have added a petticoat over her chemise before putting on her corset, or stays, as they would have been called at the time, because corset was not so much of a term that came into parlance until the early 19th century.

[Cassidy Zachary]

Witch dress listeners, as promised, for very many seasons. We're now in fourth season. Right. So we've been promising an episode on the corset, and actually next week we are going to be bringing you one which addresses some of these myths surrounding this controversial garment, which is the corset. And we will be busting these myths with corset maker extraordinaire Cynthia of Red Threaded. So I can't wait to share that episode with you. But we really have to remember, during the 18th century, the undergarment known as stays was worn by most European and American women across the class spectrum. They were everyday garments and lacked the fetishized connotation some people attached to them. Today, they're really viewed as a utilitarian garment which provided the necessary posture support while simultaneously shaping a woman's torso to the fashionable silhouette of any given era. And 18th century stays tended to support the bosom from beneath. They pushed it up and out. A fact Emphasized by low cut necklines of the dresses of this period. So low, in fact, that an occasional nip slip was not unheard of. Nor was it considered overtly sexual. Maybe a bit flirty perhaps, but normal enough that it is seen drawn into fine art and even mass produced fashion plates of the era.

[April Callahan]

Yeah, and I always love when you just come across an image from the 18th century where you're like, oh, hello. But they're, they're actually more common than you would suspect. So over her corset would have been tied a woman's panniers, which are also known as hoops, which were kind of these little basket like structures that held out the very wide expanse of skirts of the era. Over panniers, perhaps. Then the outer petticoat would be put on and you can think of it more as a skirt which either matched or contrasted the dress itself. Then the woman would add her stomacher. And a stomacher is a stiffened triangle with usually a sort of fine fabric or decoration which faces out and it's very, very stiff. And the stomacher served the purpose of helping to close, close open gowns. And how that happened is the stomach curve would have been generally pinned on with long stick pins to the corset itself. And this also being stiff, the corset itself, this protected the women from getting poked by all these pins that they were using.

[Cassidy Zachary]

And I also just want to say that that's one of my favorite pictures or images from the Kyoto fashion book that we're constantly referencing on the show is they just have this section of stomachers, and it's such an interesting garment to see or item of clothing to see on its own.

[April Callahan]

Yeah, for sure. And the fashions for stomachers themselves changed over time too, which is also really, like, interesting. The shapes and the styles, the decoration. So it's almost like this little microcosm of fashion history.

[Cassidy Zachary]

Oh, for sure.

[April Callahan]

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[April Callahan]

So finally, one of the last pieces that a woman would be putting on was the dress itself, which is more like an open robe because it didn't meet in the front, it didn't close. And that is exactly why the stomacher is there. The center front of the dress's bodice, the edges of it would be pinned to the stomacher to secure the robe like dress to the body. And that is like the icing on the cake covering this incredible under structure of all of these garments below.

[Cassidy Zachary]

Oh yeah, and if this sounds time consuming, it was. It was a lengthy process and one that for upper class women usually required at least one extra pair of hands. Women without servants could certainly dress themselves in similar garments and we highly recommend actually heading over to YouTube and checking out a video produced by past dress guest Lauren Stoll of American Duchess. She's getting herself dressed in 18th century attire. And actually there's a couple different videos, so it's super cool. And we'll put a link in our show notes, if you're interested. You'll note in that particular video that the corset she puts on is a front lacing corset. So she was actually able to lace herself in by herself. But generally speaking, you would probably get help from someone else when wearing back lacing corsets, as they would have done at the Court of Versailles.

[April Callahan]

Yes. So while the types of garments worn, like the silhouettes of the actual garments, might be similar across class strata, the corsets and the petticoats and the outer gowns, it's the materials of the garments in which they were made that is definitely not the same across class data. And we cannot stress enough the importance of textiles in the 18th century. They could be incredibly valuable, given and received as gifts, and sometimes some of the more costly items that a person might own. Maybe not if you're an aristocrat, of course, because they're wearing tons of jewels and all these different things. But the point being is that clothing was highly, highly valued and not considered disposable. And, you know, even Marie Antoinette had some of her own dresses refashioned because the textiles themselves were so intrinsically valuable. And this plays a hand in hand with the wearing of those really wide panniers. Right, Cass?

[Cassidy Zachary]

Yes. So one of the most distinctive features of 18th century dress is, of course, the panniers which supported these incredibly wide skirts which could be six feet across. The incredible volume of these silhouettes required copious amounts of fabric, breathtakingly expensive fabric in the case of court dress. And the silhouette was a status symbol to show off your means and monies, you had to be able to afford. Afford a lot of fabric.

[April Callahan]

Yeah. And this brings up a different matter entirely of the hierarchy of formality. In 18th century fashion. And today, the time of day is often what dictates what is appropriate in terms of what you would wear for a given occasion, whether it was in the morning, or whether it was in the afternoon or whether it was in the evening. But this was not necessarily so in the 18th century. It was more about not the time, time of day, but the formality of the occasion. So, for instance, the same dress might be worn to a formal night out at the opera, just as it might be worn to an aristocratic wedding held very early on a Tuesday. Morning at church. So it's really the formality of the occasion that governed dress, not what time it was on the clock.

[Cassidy Zachary]

At Versailles, official court ceremonies required formal court dress. So for men, this generally consisted of the finest of their abit francaise, frequently featuring mind boggling, elaborate embroidery and perhaps trimmings of real gold or silver. And, of course, it might be worth emphasizing that, of course, at this time, everything is made by hand. No sewing machines. There are, of course, mechanized ways of making textiles, but it was all handmade. It all involved people pulling levers, et cetera. So just incredible amount of work went into these garments. And then women's court dress had further specifications, which included tiers of lace at the end of the sleeves, just below the elbow. These lace flounces were called engagents. Engagements weren't exclusively worn for court dress, but they were a required element. And another required element for full court dress was a long train descending from the center back. So in the 18th century, court dresses were almost, if not always robe a la francaise in silhouette.

[April Callahan]

Yeah, and actually, Cass, if you think about it, this parlays all the way in to the 19th century as well, that formality of the. Of the court dress and the train. We even saw it in Downton Abbey.

[Cassidy Zachary]

Yeah, I was going to say.

[April Callahan]

Yep, yeah, yeah. So I think that where we are right now leads us nicely to where we might pick up at a later episode, which we should probably do an entire episode dedicated exclusively to Marie Antoinette. And so we might leave that for a later date. But I do want to mention here that even within court dress, which was worn by those with the right to appear at court in an official capacity, even when in that top tier of formality, in terms of court dress, there were actually modes of dressing that were exclusive to the royal family and to other specifically honored individuals. So, for instance, Cass, the Sun King, Louis xiv, declared that the use of brocade fabrics belonged to himself, the princes of his family, and those of his subjects upon whom he might be pleased to bestow the privilege. Quote. And also there were similar dictates surrounding the wearing of trimmings of silver and gold, as well as Louis XIV's signature, Les Talon rouge. You know, you mentioned the high heels earlier. While these were special ones which had red high heels on them, and he first adopted these actually in the 17th century in 1654, and he later granted the privilege of wearing the talon rouge to select courtiers in his inner circle.

[Cassidy Zachary]

So what about the women? While women of the royal family were expected to wear the widest of panniers and quote unquote, honored to wear some of the most restricted of corsets known as the grand corps, described as, quote, extremely bothersome and fatiguing. The highly inflexible grand corps wore specifically, specifically by Marie Antoinette was described by one of her ladies in waiting as quote, a specially made corset without shoulder straps laced up on the back just tight enough so that the lacing four fingers on the bottom allowed for a glimpse of a chemise of such fine batiste that would be readily apparent to everyone if one skin underneath was not sufficiently white. The front of the corset was laced, as it were, with rows of diamonds.

[April Callahan]

Yes. And there is quite a bit of primary source writing out there about the grand corps and some of these more restrictive forms that the women of the royal family wore. And everybody basically just talks again and again and again and again about like how horribly uncomfortable it was. So basically the higher your rank at court, the more uncomfortable you're honored to be. And I think that with that picture painted, we will leave off there today for our very brief snapshot of 18th century dress. There is so much more to say, Cass, that I think that we were on the trip, we were saying that we could literally spend an entire week doing a so called advanced tour that's focused specifically and solely on 18th century dress. But one of the main things that I just want to leave off here in the context of 18th century dress at Versailles is that fashion and dress were wielded as forms of social control and politicized as markers of class and status. And actually as the century progresses, we see this question of what to wear become weaponized. And Marie Antoinette was frequently the subject of satirical and political cartoons at that time in the context of fashion because she was, after all, as has been written, quote, French fashion's brightest star and its unhappiest victim.

[Cassidy Zachary]

And if you'd like to learn more on that note, we have a few past episode suggestions for you. We of course just recently re aired our episode entitled Rose Fashion in the Reign of Marie Antoinette with Kimberly Crispin Campbell. And you can check that out for more on Marie Antoinette and her stylist Rose Bertin. And as a follow up to that, if you haven't already, you might consider checking out our two part episode on fashion during the era of the French Revolution. Part one is entitled Fashion and Politics, the French Revolution. And part two is on the subcultural stylings of the post revolutionary. It kids the encroyable and marvilleuse that.

[April Callahan]

Does it for us today. Dressed listeners, may you consider where the power resides in your wardrobe. Next time you get dressed, please head to eressedpodcast on Instagram or or Rest Podcast without the underscore on Facebook to check out the visual content associated with each week's episodes.

[Cassidy Zachary]

And remember, we always love hearing from.

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You, so if you'd like to write to us, you can do [e-mail] DressedHistory.com is also our website where you can sign up for our monthly newsletter, our in person tours and online fashion history courses. And you can check out whatever else we have up our finely tailored sleeves.

[April Callahan]

We get so many questions from you all about our recommendations for fashion history books, so if you are interested you can always find a link in our show Notes to our Bookshop Bookshelf. So that address is bookshop.org shop dressed and there you can find over 150 of our favorite fashion history titles.

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And do you love dress but want to skip the ads? You can now sign up for Ad Free link listening with any tier on our Dressed History Patreon.

[April Callahan]

We are also excited to now be part of the Airwave Network and their premium ad free history subscription Airwave History plus available on Apple Podcasts. The subscription brings dressed and also 27 other popular history podcasts ad free for just $5.99 per month. More information on Patreon and Airwave is available at the link in our thank.

[Sponsor/Ad Voice]

You as always for tuning in and more dressed coming your way very soon. The History of Fashion is a production of Dressed Media.

[Neil and Ken (Triviality Podcast Hosts)]

Hi, I'm Neil. And I'm Ken and we are from the Triviality Podcast, a pub trivia style game show where a lack of seriousness.

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Meets a little bit of knowledge.

[Neil and Ken (Triviality Podcast Hosts)]

Join us each week for an hour long game of general knowledge trivia featuring special guests from around the world plus tons of extra themed episodes. If you want to improve your trivia game or you just want to scream at us in your car when we get easy questions wrong, then we're the show for you. Find triviality on all your favorite podcast apps. But you know that because you're already listening to a podcast.

[Cassidy Zachary]

Hi listeners, it's Jack Bishop. I'm the ingredients guy on America's Test Kitchen's public television show and the host of our award winning podcast. Proof Proof combines history, science and culture to tell unexpected stories about food. Every episode is filled with aha moments that you'll want to share at your next dinner party. New episodes drop every Thursday. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and you might never look at food the same way again.