VERSAILLES: Costume Inspiration
Let’s dive into the fabulous land of COSTUMES! Costumes are travel - ways of exploring the world. Costumes are theatre - ways for us to roleplay & explore our inner personae. Costumes are gifts - our collaborative way to create this unsurpassable collective artwork. Costumes are reverence - enabling worship of the magnificence of all our human bodies. Costumes are seduction - ways for us to flaunt, reveal, entice - & connect. Costumes are language - stories to share & treasure. I love how the word comes from the Latin “consuetudo”, meaning "custom" or "usage”; how the noun implies a verb, and a culture; an anthropology.
Today we begin a luscious journey inspired by the very-haute court couture of Versailles - and there’s nowhere more iconic to start than the top, with the mighty WIG….
WIGS
The trend of the wig starts with syphilis, the resultant hair loss and sores were then attempted to be treated with mercury, which worsened the problem. After The Sun King (Louis XIV) was ill with syphilis the wig wearing trend began!
Wigs became a display of wealth and they became larger, taller, more elaborate, with more features, decorations, and ornaments.
Hair was taken from animals, purchased from people and even removed from corpses, they were unhygienic, could never be washed and had lice. At balls and events there were wig salons, to apply ointments powders and perfumes to prevent bad odours.
At the peak in wig fashion, wig cages were required to support wigs up to a metre high in elaborate shapes. They sometime depicted entire theatrical scenes…
MAKEUP
Versailles aesthetics were gentle, pallid, tending towards white - no more so than the face. Rouge cheeks emphasised the pallor - on all genders.
Ruddy cheeks meant health - and sexual vigour - and even royalty (& thus fell out of favour after the Revolution)
Rouge was deployed in industrial quantities at Versailles & France in general (often shocking foreign visitors); by 1781 it was estimated that French women went through 2 million pots of rouge every year.
Often the rouge was tinted with the smell of - you guessed it - rose.
It often came in powder form, and was mixed with grease or rose water.
The au crépon version dabbed the face with a cloth dyed with carmine - a luxurious product coming all the way from South America, and made from crushed cochineal insects (or carmine). Some ladies applied a longer-lasting liquid rouge dissolved in vinegar.
Feel free to apply rouge & pinks abundantly and everywhere, not just the cheeks :)
Another key look was the discreet patch - or fake birth mark & beauty spot.
In Ancient Greece, birth marks foretold luck & prosperity, but in Ancient Rome, they often hid a darker secret, and a history of enslavement. Imperial China imbued them with deeply significant meanings, and mediaeval Europeans associated them with witchcraft.
By the 16h century they were used to cover up facial disfigurement from STDs (mostly syphilis) and smallpox.
By the Rococo age of Versailles, they helped accentuate that key vital aesthetic of the time: asymmetry. They conveyed “a perverse charm”; a mysterious, fragile allure - with a hint of luscious shadow, and depravity.
RUFFS & COLLARS
Some like it ruff.
We invite all forms of elegant and imaginative expression to cradle and frame this thin, fragile, precious stem on which we perch our minds; through which we pulse and throb; into which we slip those things that delight us most.
Unleash your creativity on your nape; let lace, pearls, beads and jewels drip from this gentle indentation; and head upstairs to our Royal Apartments if you’d like a little special interactive attention on your neck
The guillotine was introduced out of compassion by a French doctor, Joseph-Ignace Guillotin, who was opposed to the death penalty, and proposed it after the Revolution had begun. It was intended to hasten a death that was otherwise often drawn-out & horrific.
At our palace, we’ll take it a step further & remove the death part entirely, transforming our guillotine to a luxurious place for you to rest and trustfully immobilise your neck, knowing the loving servants in our Punishment Parlour have only your best interests at heart…
We await your nape with baited breath.
Get more neck at https://www.pinterest.co.uk/foxandbadge/fb-202409-versailles/necks-ruffs/
BRAS & BRALETTES
September is harvest month, and reminds us that for all its grandeur and classicism, Versailles also had a working farm (Le Petit Trianon) and animals, all at the behest of Marie-Antoinette, who yearned for a truer connection to the earth and nature than one superbly represented by the gilded leaf of the rococo style.
She effectively cross-dressed as a milkmaid, and would sometimes milk the sheep herself, boasting of the healthiness of their thick cream (hmmmm) - all after her servants had washed them & the goats and decorated them in ribbons.
It was actually today, exactly 309 years ago, that the creator of Versailles - Louis XIV - died, after the longest regal reign in European history - 72 years.
Like the Sun (King) himself, we keep heading south, now alighting today on that place where the neck expands into more voluptuous landscapes: the breast and bra (and royal back). Though we deeply love liberty, and love bare-breasted Lady Liberty leading the revolution (hint), we welcome all the ways in which the royal breast is clothed, accessorised and revered.
There’s more inspiration on the bra & back subsection of our palatial Pinterest at https://www.pinterest.co.uk/foxandbadge/fb-202409-versailles/bras-backs/
CORSETS
We slip further southwards & celebrate all the wonderful ways in which Versailles cinched the waist with corsets.
We are uncontrollably drooling over the crazy gorgeousness of these highly ornate ones…
(special shoutout to Joyce Spakman for her stunning porcelain corsets - https://www.instagram.com/candymakeupartist )
We love how they are lavished with lace & ribbons and frills & frippery…
& love the ways the waist can be so fabulously furnished with flowers…
Poise and elegance are of course not confined to the female, & we love the way all genders hold their breath - & take ours away too…
HOOPED SKIRTS
We love the hoop skirt and pannier that really enabled women to take up space on the dancefloor - sometimes three times as much as men! Luckily we’ve kept our numbers low & are going to have lots of space for that ;)
It was a liberating cage - and especially if worn without upper fabric, one they could easily escape from.
It first emerged in the Spanish court in the form of the “farthingale” (one version rumoured to have been worn to hide an illegitimate pregnancy; satirists would later illustrate it as the refuge of male adulterers - almost returning to the womb; certainly as near as possible to it).
The French introduced the crinoline (“crin” (horsehair) + “lin (linen)) cage - like an old sofa, made of horsehair. A Parisian costumier soon patented a version caging the body in lightweight steel - ohh the deliciousness of consensual bondage!
There’s a very rich seam of “cronolinomania” humour & cartoonery - with some of the best satire by
Honoré-Victorin Daumier; some at https://www.pinterest.co.uk/jessamynhazeltine/crinoline-humor/
LINGERIE
Walking around your own personal palace naked is one of the greatest pleasures in life - but doing it looking hot in lingerie might be even better! And perhaps better still in loving community, at our Brixton Versailles :)
Like crinoline, the word lingerie derives from the word “lin”, or linen - & so does the costume itself; it developed out of corsets and cages and all those bulky undergarments that so dragged a woman down, and have slowly evanesced with modernity into those sexy wisps we know & love today.
Today we celebrate that great economy of fabric and stitches that so celebrates the human form, & welcome all of you, in all your glory, to come love your look and essence, and let us love it too.
STOCKINGS
Today we near the end of our brief whip through all the sartorial gorgeousness of the French court, and the end of the human body, as we take stock of the stunning element that frames it best - STOCKINGS - and suspenders. The word came from “stocks”, meaning stump, or bottom; so saucy, that everyone was always in the stocks (you'll have the option to try on various up in our Punishment Parlour). The French word simply means bottom - “bas”; base; the recipient of bass ;)
They were originally knitted from cotton, wool, silk or - you guessed it - linen (another major connection with our previous theme, Ancient Egypt). Knitting machines were originally invented just to make stockings.
Last century, as skirts shortened, stockings rose to meet them; thankfully they soon lowered back down, exposing that precious rim of flesh we all love and cherish, strapped by suspenders in its own form of luscious daily bondage.
The Americans call the shorter version hosiery (if in slang a man gets a hose between his legs, women get 2), and the full-leg versionpantyhose - hose for the panties. Panties are a a diminutive of pants, which get their name from pantaloons, themselves named after Pantalone, the tights-wearing hunchbacked old Scrooge figure in Commedia dell’Arte.
What an evolution - that young girls these days wear clothes made famous by an old man.
Suspenders are also called garter belts, and one legendary specimen spawned the highest rank of British chivalry - the Order of the Garter, which was inspired by the moment Edward III stooped and rescued the Countess of Salisbury’s lost garter at the court ball in Calais. We toast his immortal words, which banish shame from such a sensual moment: “Honi soit qui mal y pense” ('Shame on him who thinks ill of it!'); I’ll now always remember when I see that piece of classic heraldy that it’s a paean to panties.
