Vive La France!

Finished off my sketchbook page about my Birthday Bash in Versailles et voila! 

Along with eating cake, we would wear a lot of bling, sport posh frocks, (this one I spied in the Germanic National Museum in Nuremberg!) Go for some amazing party hats and hairdos, sip bubbly out of glasses modelled on Marie Antoinette's boob (that unfortunately is an Urban legend, the champagne Coupe was invented 100 years before Marie Antoinette arrived on the scene) and chat intimately in German. As Marie Antoinette was Austrian we may have a wee dialect problem but nothing that a couple of swigs of champers won’t sort out. 

At the beginning champagne was knocked back a bit like a shot and not sipped decorously, sounds good to me! 

The famous ''pouf'' hairdos sported by the ladies measured up to five feet high and were decorated with feathers, little hats, ships and even inoculations (how appropriate!). To celebrate her husband’s inoculation against smallpox, Marie went full ''pouf'', with symbols of Louis, medicine and peace. Her hairdo arguably aided the acceptance of inoculation in France, which was seen as a dangerous measure at the time. It is often argued that far from being extravagant nonsense, ladies used their hairdos to make political statements in a predominantly man's world, in the UK the Duchess of Devonshire used her hairdos to show support for her political interests. 

The fabulous dress in my sketchbook has ''puce'' coloured stripes; puce, the French word for flea, became very fashionable in the 1770's and was so-called because it's similar to the colour of a crushed flea (or its droppings) or the colour you get from flea bites, which were extremely common at the time. 

Here is Versailles (it was rummaging through old photos of a trip to Versailles in 1989 that kicked this page off), an amazing palace that’s sheer size boggles you! Here’s me standing beside a wee urn in the garden. I appear to be wearing my version of  ''the pouf'', not quite 5 feet high but with my thin hair that would be a challenge for any hairdresser even one like Autie, Marie Antoinette’s maestro. Don’t ask me what’s going on with the clothes ..... not quite French chic! I think it was summer and I packed lots of summery clothing only it was freezing!