Incroyables and merveilleuses
The Incroyables (French: [ɛ̃kʁwajabl], "incredibles") and their female counterparts, the Merveilleuses (French: [mɛʁvɛjøz], "marvelous women"), were members of a fashionable aristocratic subculture in Paris during the French Directory (1795–1799). Whether as catharsis or in a need to reconnect with other survivors of the Reign of Terror, they greeted the new regime with an outbreak of luxury, decadence, and even silliness. They held hundreds of balls and started fashion trends in clothing and mannerisms that today seem exaggerated, affected, or even effete. They were also mockingly called "incoyable" or "meveilleuse", without the letter R, reflecting their upper class accent in which that letter was lightly pronounced, almost inaudibly. When this period ended, society took a more sober and modest turn.
Members of the ruling classes were also among the movement's leading figures, and the group heavily influenced the politics, clothing, and arts of the period. They emerged from the muscadins, a term for dandyish anti-Jacobin street gangs in Paris from 1793[n 1] who were important politically for some two years; the terms are often used interchangeably, though the muscadins were of a lower social background, being largely middle-class.
Social background
Ornate carriages reappeared on the streets of Paris the day after the execution (28 July 1794) of Maximilien Robespierre, which brought an end to the Jacobin-era Committee of Public Safety and signaled the commencement of the Thermidorian Reaction. There were masters and servants once more in Paris, and the city erupted in a furor of pleasure-seeking and entertainment. Theaters thrived, and popular music satirized the excesses of the Revolution. One popular song of the period called on the French people to "share my horror" and to send "these drinkers of human blood" back amongst the monsters from which they had sprung. Its lyrics rejoiced that "your tormentors finally grow pale at the tardy dawn of vengeance".[1]
Many public balls were bals des victimes at which young aristocrats who had lost loved ones to the guillotine danced in mourning dress or wore black armbands, greeting one another with violent movements of the head as if in decapitation.[n 2] A ball held at the Hôtel Thellusson on the rue de Provence in the 9th arrondissement of Paris restricted its guest list to the grown children of the guillotined.[2]
Clothing and fashion
The Merveilleuses scandalized Paris with dresses and tunics modeled after the ancient Greeks and Romans, cut of light or even transparent linen and gauze. Sometimes so revealing they were termed "woven air", many gowns displayed
The Incroyables wore eccentric outfits: large earrings, green jackets, wide trousers, huge neckties, thick glasses, and hats topped by "dog ears", their hair falling on their ears. Their musk-based fragrances earned the derogatory nickname muscadins for them and their immediate predecessors, a more middle-class group of anti-Jacobins. They wore bicorne hats and carried distinctive knobbled bludgeons or canes, which they referred to as their "executive power." Hair was often shoulder-length, sometimes pulled up in the back with a comb to imitate the hairstyles of the condemned. Some sported large monocles. They frequently affected a lisp, allegedly to avoid the letter "R" as in revolution, and sometimes a stooped, hunchbacked posture or slouch, as caricatured in numerous cartoons of the time.[5]
In addition to Madame Tallien, famous Merveilleuses included
The leading Incroyable,
Representation in the arts
The fictional nouveau riche social climber Madame Angot, awkwardly wearing ridiculous Greek clothing, parodied the Merveilleuses in many plays of the period. Carl Vernet's caricatures of the wardrobes of the Incroyables and Merveilleuses met with contemporary popular success.[citation needed]
The designer Vivienne Westwood was influenced by the incroyables and merveilleuses.[7]
Images of the period
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Painting Un Incroyable, by Carle Vernet, perhaps the first image of a top hat (1796)
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French caricature of Merveilleuse very thin dresses
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BoillyIncroyable parade
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James Gillray's caricature of 1805. Paul Barras being entertained by the naked dancing of two wives of prominent men, Thérésa Tallien and Joséphine Bonaparte 1797
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Full and half dress for April 1809
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Les-Modernes-Incroyables, 1810
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Les Incroyables
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French dandy
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Les Incroyables (Muscadins)
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Point de Convention c. 1797
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Madame Tallien
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Juliette Récamier (1777–1849)
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Portrait deMadame de Verninac
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Josephine de Beauharnais
Other meanings
See also
- 1795–1820 in fashion
- 1800s (decade)
- Ci-devant
- Dandy
- La fille de Madame Angot
- Jean-Lambert Tallien
- Théâtre de Paris
Notes and references
Notes
- ^ Jacobins stood for the centralised supposed far-left republic and its terrors, so included established rulers such as Robespierre
- ^ Romantic horror had already come to the fore in gothic fiction, beginning with The Castle of Otranto (1764); however, this theme expanded: Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849), Mary Shelley (1797–1851), gothic novels and other-language equivalents such as the German Schauerroman and the French roman noir would all soon follow after this period.
References
- ^ Le Reveil du peuple, "The Awakening of the People'", written by Jean-Marie Souriguières de St Marc and set to music by Pierre Gaveaux
- ISBN 2-84096-400-7
- ISSN 1754-3797.
- ^ "Reticule". Austentation: Regency Accessories. Retrieved 4 November 2012.
- S2CID 144480882 – via https://doi.org/10.1353/ecs.0.0039.)
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- ^ Alfred Richard Allinson, The Days of the Directoire, J. Lane, (1910), p. 190
- ^ "Vivienne Westwood, British designer and activist, dies age 81". Le Monde.fr. 31 December 2022.
- ^ Lucky Meisenheimer. "Lucky's History of the Yo-Yo". Archived from the original on 13 December 2009. Retrieved 26 November 2009.
Bibliography
- Barras, Paul; Mémoires de Barras, membre du Directoire (1895), Hachette, 1896
- Clarke, Joseph; Commemorating the Dead in Revolutionary France: Revolution and Remembrance, 1789–1799; Cambridge University Press, 2007.
- André Gaillot, ed. (1911) Une ancienne muscadine, Fortunée Hamelin: lettres inédites 1839–1851, Émile-Paul, 1911
Further reading
- Bourhis, Katell le: The Age of Napoleon: Costume from Revolution to Empire, 1789–1815, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1989. ISBN 0870995707