Cotton (I)

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What is the most significant fashion innovation in history? The Atlantic, September 2014 (under the heading The Big Question).
www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc ... ig-question/375078/

Note: “Kimberly Chrisman-Campbell, author, Fashion Victims: Dress at the Court of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette
Although Marie Antoinette is remembered as a free-spending fashionista, her most controversial fashion statement was a simple cotton gown. Before cotton became widely available in the Western world in the late 1700s, the high cost of silk and wool made new clothing prohibitively expensive for commoners. Cotton gave the masses access to fashion—but it also brought imperialism, a booming slave trade, and untold environmental damage.”
(a) That book will be published by Yale University Press on April 14, 2015. That’s right, next year. In the process of pre-order now.

(b) David Grubin Productions, Inc (creator), Marie Antoinette and the French Revolution> Royal Life> Dress Up. PBS, Sept 13, 2006
www.pbs.org/marieantoinette/life/chamber_dress_up.html
(“ To make matters worse,  the Queen's championing of cotton muslin was also interpreted as a rejection of French silks for the products of France's imperial rival, Britain, which was flooding the market with the newly fashionable fabric from its colonies on the Indian subcontinent.
(i) Take notice the picture above to illustrate “Dress Up” is actually two photos: the queen (see (c)) and the background. Most important, in the college, the queen was NOT wearing chemise at all. Also see (c).
(ii) The page talked about chemise and muslin. Please note
(A) chemise is a clothing style. (From Marie Antoinette’s time to now, women’s underwear has changed, So her chemise looks different from today’s chemise. For the latter (which can be made of synthetic material), go to images.google.com.)

What was chemise made of in her time?   Mary Brooks Picken, A Dictionary of Costume and Fashion; Historic and modern. Dover Books (1999), at 59
books.google.com/books?id=CbOI4TCcnbQC&pg=PA59&lpg=PA59&dq="Chemise+a+la+Reine"+dictionary&source=bl&ots=adsmjsLiHA&sig=mRsRo_mNVpvXJ2A5DehN84cqWKE&hl=en&sa=X&ei=YUsSVP3AMsTjsASFl4HwAQ&ved=0CEEQ6AEwCg#v=onepage&q="Chemise a la Reine" dictionary&f=false
(“chemise à la reine (F[rench]. [English pronunciation] ah lah rain). A simple frock of sheer cotton or light silk, worn by Marie Antoinette, who introduced this lingerie-type of frock into Europe. A full standing ruffle finished the low neck, a deep fluted founce edhed teh shirt, and a sooft wide belt wrapped around the waist")
(B) French English dictionary
* reine (noun feminine; from Latin rēgīna): “queen”
en.wiktionary.org/wiki/reine
* roy (noun masculine; from Latin noun masculine rex): “king”
(C) Muslin is a cloth made of cotton.
(iii) Definitions
(A) chemise (n; Middle English, shirt, from Anglo-French, from Late Latin camisia)
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/chemise

* Latin English dictionary
camisia (noun feminine):
"1: shirt
2: nightgown
3: alb"
en.wiktionary.org/wiki/camisia
(B) muslin (n; ultimately from the modern city Mosul, Iraq): "a plain-woven sheer to coarse cotton fabric"
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/muslin

choi

(continued)

(c) Leimomi Oakes, The Dreamdtress, July 16, 2009 (a blog).
thedreamstress.com/2009/07/the-chemise-a-la-reinegaulle/

Quote:

“I’ll answer some questions about the chemise a la reine (also called a robe de gaulle [or simply ‘la gaulle’ or ‘the gaulle’])

“Jane is absolutely right: the chemise a la reine (it means ‘a simple dress in the style of the queen’) was named after Marie Antoinette, so it should look like the dresses in the second half of the movie about her!

“Marie Antoinette caused a scandal of enormous proportions when she had her portrait painted in a chemise a la reine [made of muslin, not silk, in that portrait].

“The artist, Élisabeth Vigée-Lebrun, tried to calm the scandal by painting another almost identical portrait where Marie Antoinette was wearing more formal clothes.

“Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, was actually good friends with Marie Antoinette and introduced the chemise a la reine to England after the Queen gave her one during a visit. People took up the fashion because it was very easy to imitate it: early chemise a la reine were basically two rectangles of fabric with a drawstring at the top. To the best of my knowledge there isn’t a pattern for chemise a la reine/gaulle out there.

(d) muslin
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muslin

View only the second photo whose legend is, “Marie Antoinette in her famous ‘muslin’ portrait, 1783”
(e) The sketch in The Atlantic suggests the Queen went to guillotine in cotton. Indeed she was.

Catherine Delors, 16th of October 1793: Execution of Marie-Antoinette. Versailles and More, Oct 1`6, 2010 (blog)
blog.catherinedelors.com/16th-of-october-1793-execution-of-marie-antoinette-2/
("She is informed that she is not to wear her black dress to her execution. She puts on her only other remaining garment: a white cotton dress, with a black petticoat, and a white cap adorned with black ribbon")