26 18th Century Fashion: The Pouf

A pouf was an elaborate hairdo built on scaffolding made from wire, cloth, gauze, horsehair, fake hair, and the women’s real hair. After the hair was arranged, the structure was dusted with flour, the entire ensemble resembling some elaborate confectionery, probably giving rise to the legend that Marie Antoinette, when told of France’s starving citizenry, said, “Let them eat cake.” Some poufs boasted an miniature still-life either expressing sentiment (pouf au sentiment) or to commemorate an event (pouf à la circonstance). By the time of the events depicted in the play, Marie Antoinette had begun wearing her hair in a much less elaborate fashion, but the image of the queen in a pouf remains an iconic one.

In “The Queen’s Hair:  Marie-Antoinette, Politics, and DNA,” Hosford writes,

One fundamental element in this process [Marie Antoinette’s struggle for agency and personal autonomy] was the queen’s hair, an element of her body that served as a site of agency, an embodiment of her acceptance of or resistance to external forces. As such, Marie-Antoinette’s hairstyles functioned as a corporeal element in the establishment of her French identity, served a performative role within the context of French queenship, and continued to operate as a site of dynastic agency even after her death.^[1]

Since Marie Antoinette was Austrian, she needed to conform to French fashion and establish her identity as the Queen of France; once she had done so, she used that need for acculturation to assert her personal authority and autonomy, to become a maker of fashion rather than a follower. However, despite the public’s outrage at her extravagant hairstyles, when Marie Antoinette simplified her look, she was criticized as well.

Just before she was taken from the Conciergerie by cart to the Place de la Republique, the executioner entered her cell and cut the Queen’s iconic hair short around her cap.

Bibliography of Sources:

Bashor, Will. Marie Antoinette’s Head:  The Royal Hairesser, the Queen, and the Revolution. Guilford, Connecticut:  Lyons Press, 2013.

Hosford, Desmond. “The Queen’s Hair: Marie-Antoinette, Politics, and DNA.” Eighteenth-Century Studies 38, no. 1 (2004): 183-200. http://www.jstor.org/stable/30053635.

Image Citations:

Fig. 1. Charles Emmanuel Patas (1744-1801). Marie-Antoinette, en pied, de trois quarts à gauche, coiffure en hérisson entremêlée de perles, avec rouleaux retombant sur les épaules, ornée de plumes fixées sur le côté gauche par une attache de pierreries, robe décolletée cerise garnie de dentelles, traîne bleu de roi : Habit de Cour de satin Cerise… : [estampe]. 18th century, engraving in color, 23.6 x 17.5 cm. Bibliothèque nationale de France, département Estampes et photographie, Paris. From: Bibliothèque nationale de France, département Estampes et photographie. Accessed May 6, 2019.  https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b6940322k.

Fig. 2. Marie-Antoinette, en buste, de trois quarts à gauche, coiffure en hérisson entremêlée de perles, avec rouleaux retombant sur les épaules, ornée de plumes fixées sur le côté gauche par une attache de pierreries ; corsage décolleté et robe à paniers garnis de bouillonnés de gaze à lignes, et de lys brodés attachés par des noeuds de gaze ; grand manteau fleurdelysé doublé d’hermine jeté sur l’épaule droite et que la Reine tient de la main gauche : [estampe]. 18th century, engraving in color, 24 x 19.5 cm. Bibliothèque nationale de France, département Estampes et photographie, Paris. From: Bibliothèque nationale de France, département Estampes et photographie. Accessed May 6, 2019.  https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b6940329g.

Fig. 3. Le négligé galant ornés de la coéffure à la Belle-Poule : [estampe]. 18th century, engraving in color. Bibliothèque nationale de France, département Estampes et photographie, Paris. From: Bibliothèque nationale de France, département Estampes et photographie. Accessed May 6, 2019. https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b8410150k.

Fig. 4. Coëffure aux charmes de la liberté : [estampe]. 18th century, engraving, 23.5 x 15.5 cm. Bibliothèque nationale de France, département Estampes et photographie, Paris. From: Bibliothèque nationale de France, département Estampes et photographie. Accessed May 6, 2019. https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b8411269b.

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