03/14/2025
Les Marveilueuses indeed! 🖼 🧑🏻
“Naked” dresses have been sweeping the red carpet lately. But this trend is nothing new.
Let’s turn back the clock to the 1790s. France's royals have gone to the guillotine, but by now, so has revolutionary leader Robespierre. After the bloody and repressive Reign of Terror, France is finally experiencing some semblance of peace under a more moderate government.
French aristocrats, no longer facing ex*****on or expulsion, are partying harder than ever before—and they’re stepping out in some daring outfits.
Young noblewomen embraced this era’s loosened restrictions and more permissive culture. Abandoning their corsets, they wore flowing Grecian dresses that left little to the imagination. Sometimes, before embarking on a promenade or strutting into a ball, they would even dribble water on the fabric to make it as clingy and transparent as possible.
Glamorous and defiant, they became known as the Merveilleuses(“marvelous ones”).
The Merveilleuses—together with their male counterparts, the Incroyables (“incredible ones”)—shocked French society with their brazen fashion and ostentatious parties.
Many of these young nobles had lost loved ones in the Terror, and after enduring such trauma, they felt justified indulging in some catharsis. Critics accused them of resurrecting the very excess that the French Revolution originally sought to quash.
One Merveilleuse, Joséphine de Beauharnais, would soon play a key role in the new century. She married Napoleon, who seized power in 1799 and soon declared himself Emperor of France.
With all eyes on Empress Josephine, the free, audacious style of the Merveilleuses carried into the Napoleonic era—becoming forever etched into history and even finding echoes in today’s fashions.
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🖼 Circle of Jacques-Louis David, “Portrait of a Young Woman in White,” 1798, oil on canvas, 49 x 37 in., Chester Dale Collection