March 31, 2014 • 37 mins
The legendary wardrobe of Marie-Antoinette has been criticized, envied and discussed to no end. But where did all those glorious clothes come from? In large part, they were the work of Rose Bertin, a milliner who found herself the stylist to the queen. Read the show notes here.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy Vie Wilson talking about
something I like a lot today. I'm so excited, actually
so in my sort of zone of pet topics. It's
(00:23):
a it's a big it's an intersection of several zones,
it really is. Uh. And the legendary wardrobe of Marie Antoinette,
who is not exactly who we're talking about, but she
does figure prominently in the story. Her wardrobe has been criticized,
it's been envied, it's been discussed to no end by
historians and sociologists. Uh. But where did all those glorious
(00:44):
clothes come from? Is a bigger question. And in large
part they were the work of a woman named Rose
Bertent and her staff and the town was a milliner
who found herself basically the stylus to the queen, and
she enjoyed a level of privilege that even royals were
not really given at that time. Uh. And while there
were certainly other people designing clothes long before, she was
(01:07):
the first to really make this sort of transition from
an anonymous dressmaker, although we'll talk in just a second
about that term uh to a famous dressmaker, to like
basically a famous designer. UH. And this was all because
of the patronage of you know, a famous clothes force.
And a note before we get started, UH, you'll hear
us refer to Rose Berta's throughout the episode as a milliner,
(01:30):
which in today's parlance would mean that she was a
hat maker. But in this time, someone with that title
didn't only make hats. A milliner could be called upon
to make dresses, to add trim and detailing to existing gowns. Sometimes,
like a gown would be brought in to be refreshed
and all the trims would be taken off and new
trims would be put on, and different um alterations would
be made to make it look new and different. Other accessories,
(01:54):
sometimes even gloves and underpinnings, were also within the purview
of a milliner. UH. I use the terms interchangeably as
milliner and dressmaker. Some historians get a little bit prickly
about that um because calling her a dressmaker sort of
seems to devalue her position a little bit. To me,
(02:14):
it's a very important position to be called a dressmaker,
but just so you know, like she's technically a milliner,
that would be her title. Uh, I'm gonna use words interchangeably.
I'm okay with that, And I won't even talk about
We don't go into it, although we do mention one
person related. The millinery trade at this time sometimes had
some negative associations with it, of women working in it
(02:36):
being also applying another trade. At times, it was not
known to be the most virtuous um occupation. Suddenly, this
makes the Seamstress Guild in Terry Pratchett's Discworld books really funny.
I mean, it was funny already, and now you haven't
just told me that it is even more funny. Yeah,
(02:57):
and we'll mention one other person that was kind of
tied to the millinery trade. That will kind of also
make that a little bit clearer and you'll see the
association's uh. But we're not really going into that whole
the ceedy side of it too much should get started.
Absolutely So. Rose was born at Amien, and that was
a city about a hundred and twenty kilometers north of Parents,
and she was born on July second, seventy seven. Her
(03:20):
name when she was born was Marie Jeanne Berton. And
one of the things that's interesting about this time in
history is that people would change their names pretty frequently,
sometimes as a move up the latter thing, and sometimes not.
But you will not hear her refer to that with
that name again. So just heads up. Her parents, Nicholas
and Marie Marguerite Breton, we're not particularly wealthy. Uh. And
(03:43):
in an effort to provide from Marisian and her younger
brother Jean Ran, her mother worked as a sick nurse
to supplement the family income. Is what her father made
didn't really make enough for them to raise and educate
their children, which was something they really um prioritized. There's
a story in meal on glads bertem biography that Rose,
when she was still a child, became just completely obsessed
(04:05):
with having her palm read by a fortune teller who
was reported to be extremely insightful and was also imprisoned nearby.
And so since she had no money, Rose allegedly starved
starved herself so that she could bring food to the
fortune teller in exchange for having her palm read. Uh.
The reading was rendered, and according to the tale, the
(04:27):
young girl was told that she would quote Rise to
great fortune and one day where a court dress. Yeah,
it's interesting. Uh. That biography, by the way, which will
reference a few more times and was one of the
big sources for this, was written in and I, Uh,
he did a lot of digging through records to get
a lot of stuff, a lot of the details and
(04:48):
the the data about her existence and some of the
numbers and stuff. Right, but there is a little bit
of flourish, So I immediately kind of questioned this story,
but it's the interesting one to include this idea that
she was kind of obsessive and willing to do what
she had to do to achieve what she wanted. Rose's father, Nicholas,
(05:11):
died on January seventeen fifty four, and that left the
family to survive as best they could on his wife's income.
She was still working as a sick nurse and the
family struggled, but Rose always assisted her mother whenever possible.
She was not a girl that was afraid of hard work,
so when she was only sixteen, Rose decided to move
(05:32):
to Paris. She was smart and pretty and decided to
use her charms to secure a position as an apprentice
at a millinery shop, and the shop was called trade Gallant,
which translates to gallant stroke or gallant feature. And this
shop was run by Mademoiselle Pageot, and it was already
a supplier of accessories to the courts of France and Spain,
(05:53):
so it was really quite a good position to get into.
Around this same time, a young woman named Jean Key
was also an apprentice at another millinary shop, which was
run by Mademoiselle Labby Uh and Jean Biqu would later
find her way into the name Madame Duberry and set
her own place in history as King Louis the fifteenth Mistress. Yeah,
(06:16):
that's kind of one of those tie ins of a
woman who maybe was not super virtuous working in the
millinary trade. Still laughing about the seamsters skilled Uh and
Rose had not been working for very long for Mademoiselle
when she was dispatched one evening to make a delivery
to the Princess de Conti, And while she was at
(06:36):
the princess's residence, she made small talk with a woman
that she believed to be a chambermaid. So, of course
it turns out that she was actually talking to the princess,
and Rose was just hugely embarrassed at her gaff, and
she apologized profusely. The Princess, who had found her to
be just quite charming, reassured her that no ill had
(06:58):
been done, her identity had not been made a parent.
The princess also promised ongoing goodwill towards britand on her part, yeah,
that was a good friend to have made, even though
it was accidental and maybe definitely also embarrassing. Yeah, and
the story is related in a way that she showed
up and it was quite late in the evening, and
(07:18):
this woman was already kind of dressed down. She was
definitely not in robes that would suggest her position at all.
So that's why Rose thought, oh, it's just a mate,
just chat while we wait for other people to come
and look at these gowns I've brought. And then it
was not the case at all, um, And the Princess's
fondness for this young milliner was almost immediately manifest. Soon
(07:39):
after the two men and this embarrassing but fundamentally beneficial
event took place, a royal marriage between a Duke de
Shot and Louise Marie led de Bourbon was arranged, and
Rose at her new royal friends recommendation was called upon
to make the bride's true show. She's like a huge
get in turn. Yeah, that's a big deal. This was
(08:03):
a really lucrative bridal order, and it not only brought
Rose into the favor of the royals, who would all
need clothing and accessories, but it also elevated her position
in the shop. Mademoiselle Pagelle made Rose a partner in
the in the millinery shop, and from this point on
Rose's royal patrons only grew in number. The Duchess de
(08:24):
Shapla became a protectress. She, like the Princess de Conti,
looked out for Rose and really helped along her business interests. Unfortunately,
the Duke du Shot also took an interest in Rose
and uh really pursued her very diligently in the hopes
of a romantic relationship, but she really was not having
(08:44):
that at all. Whether this is because she was loyal
to her customer, the Duchess, or simply because she just
was not interested in the man is is basically unclear,
but either way, she had no time for that business
was her response. And rumors of a plot that the
Duke had concocted to kidnap Rose and take her away
(09:05):
to a country house to sort of force her to
become his mistress. Reached the Milliner she found out about them,
but it made her constantly fearful that, you know, at
any moment someone was going to pop out from around
the corner and snatch her and take her away to
the country. Sounds terrible, it really does. Just trying to
do her work her alone, trying to take your wife's clothes.
(09:25):
Please get out of my way. So one day Rose
was visiting the comtest du son about an order, and
the Duke came and also made this appearance. She refused
to get out of receipt when the Duke entered, and
when the Countess questioned her about why she was acting
this way, she was straight up front about it. She
explained that the Duke had clearly forgotten his place in
(09:47):
pursuit of her, and so she would not honor their
societal gap. Yeah, She's like, when he remembers his place,
I will treat him like he belongs in that place.
Just kind of a wonderfully sassy and just to do
it in front of one of his you know, social
equals was very cool. People get mad sometimes and we
talk about how much we love the people were talking about.
(10:08):
But this is at the moment when the switch goes
to I love her. Uh. And the Duke was caught
in his game in front of this pier, and he
did not deny it. But he did call Rose a
little serpent. I saw it was by the same translator
of this biography, and one he called her a viper,
and one he called her a serpent, like two different
(10:29):
um translations by the same person. So but the important
thing is that he left her alone after that, kind
of gave up his pursuit. Uh. And before we get
to the next step in Rose's career, do you want
to pause for a moment and have a word from
a sponsor. Yes. So back to Rose Bertin. As her
popularity with the royal class group, she sort of outgrew
(10:49):
her position with Mademoiselle Pegette. So the Duchess was in
the habit of assisting young women in their entrepreneurial efforts,
and she had already given Rose her favor. So with
the Uchess's financial backing, Rose set up her shop a
Grand Mogul in the Rude Descent Honoree, and in addition
to bankrolling this enterprise, the Duchess de Hipload also used
(11:11):
her position to send business Rose's way and kind of
anchors Rosa's pr agent within the royal class, which she
had already been doing to some degree, but once she
had financially set up this business, she really wanted it
to succeed. In seventeen seventy, the Duchess met with Madame
Dannaya and Madame the Misery, and these were the lady
in waiting in first chambermaid who had been selected to
(11:32):
attend the new Dolphine, who was Marie Antoinette. The Duchess
praised Rosa's skills and personality and suggested that she'd be
chosen to make the ensemble that the new Princess would
change into at Strasburg border crossing as she stepped onto
French soil and became a woman of France. Yes, so,
(11:53):
just in case anybody doesn't know that hasn't seen the
movies about Marie Antoinette, etcetera. When she crossed from Austria
into France, she changed all of her clothes, she changed
everything so that she would emerge onto French soil as
a French princess and leave Austria behind. And so Rose
made that outfit that she changed into, which is a
huge deal because that was also the outfit that most
(12:14):
people would see her in for the first time, sort
of her arrival ensemble symbolic and also actually important. And
the lobbying of the Duchess's chapla, along with similar please
from other royals that Barton had won over as clients,
actually got the young entrepreneur her order and the first
exposure to her of her work to the new Princess. So,
(12:37):
in addition to it being important because it was a
huge imagery issue for France, it also gave the woman
who would be queen her first taste of French clothing,
so it was important on many levels. Yeah, so bertend
soon got her first in person introduction to the princess
from Austria. It's entirely likely that the talented but also
(13:00):
business savvy milliner was just completely aware of the opportunity
that was presenting itself to her. If she pleased the
new Dolphine, all of France would be clamoring for her work,
and thanks again to the high praise that her existing
clientele gave her, fine, she was awarded a royal order
for the Princess in the amount of two twenty thousand livres,
(13:21):
which is worth roughly four thousand dollars at the time.
So that's in seventeen seventy two, so that is a
huge fortune really, So we should point out that this
rise to the favor of the queen was not like
an instantaneous process. Marie Antoinette had arrived in France in
seventeen seventy and it was seventeen seventy two when Britague
got her first order. There were a lot more to
(13:43):
come after that though. The Dauphine's clothing allowance in seventy
seventeen seventy two was one hundred and twenty thousand livres annually,
and that's roughly twenty four thousand dollars, very very roughly,
but about one order of that money. I mean, even
in today's money, if you just told me you have
twenty four dollars to spend on clothes this year, I'd
(14:05):
be like, right on high five, I'm laughing. I would
show up to work in a ball gown every day, um,
But about one quarter of that expense was allocated for
quote ordinary dresses, like the dresses she would just wear
in her day to day life. If there was nothing
important to do, just highly unlikely when you are a dauphine,
because then three quarters of that was designated for extraordinary expenses,
(14:27):
i e. Fancy pants, unicorn dresses, like all of the
big You're going to an event, you're being presented at X,
Y or Z, You're going to meet another member of
royalty from another country that's here with an envoy, any
of those types of things. So that already is a
lot of money. In October of seventeen seventy four, Marie
Ants when it's clothing allowance rose to two hundred thousand libra. Yeah. Again,
(14:55):
it's almost doubling it from before. I mean not quite almost,
but almost. It brings it to I mean I'm doing
quick math in my head and brings it to close
to at the time still, I mean it's like a
million dollar budget. Now. I could not find a good
comparison of like what that would equal. It's really hard
to compare dollar amount well, and especially because livra no
longer exists as a form of currency, so tricky. But
(15:18):
once Marie Antoinette became queen, she uh. In her first
year as queen, she accrued in a debt of three
hundred thousand livre in clothing expenses, and the King did
not actually know she was racking up quite that much,
but she did it just the same. So the vast
majority of this money was going right to Rose Berton.
(15:41):
And so this sounds incredibly lucrative, and it is. It
was only a small portion of the money that she
was making through her shop. So that where the Dauphine
and then Queen went for her gowns and her accessories,
that was where everyone wanted to go. Yeah, I mean
Bartana really had kind of become this huge um business
(16:01):
juggernaut in a way, because you know, and we should
I shouldn't I mischaracterized when I wrote in the notes
that it's like a small part of her business. It
was a huge part of her business. But she was
getting a lot of business on top of that. So
I mean millions of dollars in the very vague equivalent
of today's money being spent in this one millinery shop
(16:23):
on clothes by the royal class. Uh. And we talked
about Mary Antoinette becoming queen, and we should talk about
her coronation gown because it was quite something and it
was a betime creation. So Traditionally, the clothing choices for
the male royals and attendance at a coronation ceremony would
(16:44):
be in a style which evoked no specific era or
style of dress. Of course, neither Murray Antoinette nor Rose
Bertan would agree to that idea at all. Yeah, And additionally,
I mean they kind of had this this room to
argue about it, or argue their case because a royal
(17:04):
consort had not been part of a coronation since Catherine
de Medici in seven. There had been several bachelor kings
in a row on the French throne. So uh, there
was more than a two hundred year long lag since
the last lady in Marie Antoinette's position, and there wasn't
a convention to follow based on that, And so the
Dauphine and her designer kind of took advantage of that
(17:26):
gap in protocol to go, all right, we're making a
huge gown and it's going to be ridiculous and wonderful.
That ridiculous and wonderful, is right. The gown Bertemp made
for Marie Antoinette to where it was encrusted with jewels,
including many many sapphires, and also heavy embroidery. This made
the garment enormously heavy. Uh. The dressmaker slash designer tried
(17:49):
to arrange a special carriage just to take it to
the seam to be clean. Yeah, I don't know that
she was granted that wish and Marie Antoinette was placed
on a special stand and to view the ceremony. And
I don't know if you know load bearing issues were
part of that because of this gown, she couldn't really
(18:09):
walk around in it. Yeah, gowns of this era were
already extremely heavy compared to what we wear today. Yeah,
this would be extraordinarily heavy on top of that already heavy, Yeah,
I mean it would not be People probably have the
image of the big, wide hipped you know, the penny
a U shaped gowns. It's not uncommon for those to
(18:31):
take twenty yards of fabric just because of the many
layers and the the shape of it is so wide,
it's so on top of the weight of twenty yards
of fabric is the weight of Heaven only knows the
value of all of those jewels and heavy like gold
bouyon embroidery, which is very heavy on its own, and
(18:52):
then underpinning in case that was not enough. Yes, so
it was a significant achievement and clothing engineering, I would
even say so. As the crowds followed Marie Antoninette in style,
Briton was able to develop this rather ingenious way to
just keep the money flowing in. She would take the
(19:13):
orders from the rest of the royals for gowns that
were similar to the ones of the Queen war And
as the Queen saw more and more people dressed like her,
she would get tired of that and want something new
and different. Yes, so Britton would design new styles for
her majesty. You know, she also had a hand in
in the hairstyle, so there was lifting the hair higher,
there was shifting the drape of a skirt by bustling
(19:34):
at all, a polonaise, accenting with feathers, et cetera. And
with each of these changes that kind of updated the style,
the masses would follow and the Queen would again want
something new. So she kind of developed this perfect cycle
of just continuous orders planned obsolescence of royal clothing. So
smart it was really an effective business model. Her shop
(19:56):
stayed busy with an array of clients wanting all the
latest style, while she simultaneously worked on fashions for the
Queen that we're going to become the next big style
and bring the same people right back to her for
a wardrobe update. And in France and particularly the Court
of France at the time, to be out of date
on your style was really an embarrassment and could really
(20:16):
affect you socially, which is ridiculous, but that's how it works, uh.
And Bartag normally visited the Queen twice a week and
she would discuss new designs. She would review sketches and textiles.
They would talk about the styling and accessorizing that was
going to accompany individual looks. Uh. And so she really
became her stylist, and in many regards, even though there
(20:37):
were other people making clothes for the Queen as well.
If that can just blow your mind some more hundreds
of gowns a year um. But this level of access
to the Queen that Bartag had would normally be absolutely
unheard of for someone outside the royal circle. But Briant
to win It's obsession with fashion afforded the millinery these
special privileges, and it also earned bear Town the nickname
(20:59):
Minister Fashion. Among Marie Antoinette's critics she was really getting
land based in the press a lot as being the
source of waste or one of the purveyors of waste
in the the royal court, that she they had realized
she had figured out this wonderful way to keep money
coming in constantly, and that she was purposely kind of
(21:19):
putting an expiration date on everything by making similar copies
of dresses. Uh. And they they really kind of lampooned
her in the press. So it's important to remember that
while Barton was benefiting financially from her relationship with the
Queen and the Queen's circle, the real benefit was this
so called protection that she had been offered by so
(21:40):
many of them. So for example, at one point, one
of Breton's relatives, who was a widow making her living
as a bookseller, was arrested for selling pamphlets that satirized
public officials in seventeen seventy three. Breton was able to
just call up all of her friends among the royalty
for help. So first her relative was released from the Bestie,
(22:01):
but at her sentencing she was exiled from Paris for
five years as a punishment, and Barton continued to campaign
on behalf of the bookseller. After this, this sentencing happened,
and thanks to pressure from Marie Antoinette and other ladies
of the court, that sentence was overturned a month after
it was issued. So not only did this woman wind
(22:21):
up being freed, but then she was invited to dine
with the Queen and she became the court bookseller, which
was a position that she held until the Revolution ousted
Louis the sixteenth from his seat. And in another instance,
during a royal procession through Paris en route to an
event which had many carriages in it, the Queen, seeing
(22:41):
Barton and her staff on the balcony of the shop
in rutissent, Honore acknowledged her dressmaker, which is a huge
honor for you know, a queen to point you out
and kind of nod to you in one of these processions,
and this resulted in every carriage after that of the
King and Queen also having to acknowledge her. Uh. Apparently,
Barton spent the day basically curteyed carriages, and on at
(23:05):
least two equate occasions, the Queen also arranged for Barton
to be led to a better seat at the theater
when she was when she realized that her stylist was
sitting in a less than stellar position to enjoy the entertainment.
So Barton had really achieved an unprecedented level, like an
unprecedented rise from her beginnings to where she ended up
once she had the favor of the Queen. So to
(23:28):
be granted these kinds of favor, favors and especially with
this much regularity by those in the highest positions of society,
was quite an accomplishment for this, you know, girl from
I'm Young. So other women such as Madame Duberry, who
we talked about earlier, had basically slept their way to
the top of French society. Breton had used her entrepreneurial
(23:50):
skill to get there. Yeah, which really says quite a
bit about her and support the idea of how very
smart she was. Uh. And as she cemented her place
as a milan or to the nobility, she did have
a little bit of uh that thing that often happens
to people when they get famous really quickly. She got
a little bit of a superior attitude sometimes. Uh. There
(24:13):
are tales of her telling clients that she was going
to delay their orders because she and the Queen had
decided that a style should not be debuted until later,
and she would sometimes shrug off customers of lower rank
by selling them fashions that were out of date, even
though wearing them would be social suicide. Like there's one
tale of a nobleman who is trying to get a
(24:35):
hat for a relative or a friend who is from
the country, and she's like, sell them on the last
month's hats. Yeah. So she really was just kind of
saying like, you're unimportant, I don't really care about you,
which is a terrible way to do business. But she
had so much she kind of felt like she could
make these, uh, less than ideal statements to people. She
(24:57):
also is said to have responded to criticis is hum
from people by reminding them that her work was good
enough for the Queen. I personally have no problem with
her saying this. Yeah, it sounds like she was pretty
petulant about it, though, where someone said, oh, you know
this dress, uh, this bodice isn't quite right, and she'd
be like, it's good enough with the Queen. Yeah. It's
(25:18):
kind of a snooty, petuity way to do it. I
can't understand it in point of fact, but uh. She
would also turn down work for the wives of white
collar workers, so like if a lawyer's wife came to her,
she'd be like, I don't really need your business. Uh.
This backfired on her though, because one of her employees,
UH set up shop for herself and made a pretty
good living catering to the customers that Bartang cast off,
(25:40):
and they became rivals to some degree. And after an
altercation where the furious Barton allegedly spat in the face
of this former employee, there was a dramatic legal battle.
So her snobbery kind of bit her on the tail.
So Mademoiselle Pico, who was the former employee, said that
she was so shocked by Bertime's behavior that she passed out.
(26:02):
Britag countered that she had never behaved in such a manner.
The initial judgment found Bertag guilty, but she appealed, and
at this point the Queen intervened, So not only was
the previous judgment overturned, but Mademoiselle Pico was also ordered
to pay the expenses that were associated with the appeal.
So yet another example of where it was really good
for Barton to have all these friends in high places.
(26:23):
So because of her close association with the Queen and
the Queen's circle. It is probably no surprise that as
the revolution shifted the balance of power in France, it
also shifted Birtann's fortunes. Even after the royal family was
in custody of the National Assembly, Britang continued to deliver
gowns to the Queen, although they were much simpler than
what she'd been making before. And these deliveries, uh, it's
(26:48):
worth pointing out we're definitely an act of devotion. So
at the time, the Milliner, having lost her social standing
in large part, was also having trouble collecting debts from
other clients. And so even though her finances as we're
starting to crumble, she still clothed the dethroned queen like
she was still very appreciative of their relationship. Once Marie
An's when it was executed, Pretend, realizing that things were
(27:10):
not going to go well for her, fled to London.
She set up a shop there and catered to many
of her previous patrons from France who had also fled.
She did return to France a couple of years later, though,
in but she had no career at the level that
she had once known. To go back to her name
was associated still with Louis the sixteenth of Marianntoinette, and
(27:31):
the styles of dresses that she really excelled at were
no longer fashionable. Uh. The fashion dolls that she had
once made as miniature versions of her fashion designs, which
would be sent out sort of as three D catalogs
for people to see. Like it was almost like if
you picture a fashion doll today in a beautiful gown,
and you would go, I want that gown. Um. They
became popular as collectible, so she was still making those
(27:54):
and she was still making a living. It wasn't like
she was a pariah, but she was really never able
to return to the level of success that she had
known during Louis the sixteenth reign. Eventually, Louie Nicola Berta,
who was Rose's nephew, was set up in her old
shop and he sold Linen's and other fancy articles. Rose
still owned the shop, but she was mired in ongoing
(28:15):
efforts to settle all the old pre revolution debts, and
in the early eighteen hundreds, is she had gotten older,
Rose would occasionally still sell small orders to royals who
remembered her as a broker of the most elegant styles,
but these really served to kind of stroke her ego
more than they filled her pocketbook. While she struggled financially,
(28:36):
Rose also offered her services to old friends as favors.
She never really pressed them for payment. It's like all
of her wiles that she had used to make such
a huge fortune stopped being part of her her operating plan. Yeah. Uh.
You know, while she was at the height of her career,
(28:56):
really difficult and judgmental by some people's descriptions, she seemed
to soften a lot after the Revolution took the wind
out of her sales. And I think she saw a
sort of camaraderie with these people that were in a
similar boat, of like, we had this life and now
everything has changed, and now we're kind of all in
this together, and let's take care of each other with dresses,
with beautiful clothes. Uh. Sadly, Rose died on September twenty eight,
(29:21):
thirteen in the village of Epinay, where she owned land
and spent her time away from Paris. She was sixty six,
and while she was certainly no longer famous the way
she had been in her heyday, her obituary did run
in numerous papers, and there were many kind remembrances written
about both her style and her generosity, particularly later in life,
(29:42):
although even before she became famous, people would talk about
how how sweet she was and how she was very kind.
So it seems like she kind of became a little
bit of a tyrant for a brief period when she
was super wildly popular, uh, and then that shifted back
to sort of her her more natural nature. Her two nephews,
Claude Charlemagne and Nicholas, and two nieces discovered that there
were still many uncollected debts that were owed to Barton,
(30:06):
and so after she died they did manage to recover
some of that money for the estate, but it took
several decades. They really had to work quite diligently to
collect any of that money. In the introduction to the
biography that we referenced earlier by Emil Langelade, he wrote,
the reign of Marie Antoinette was one of futility and chiffon,
(30:28):
and if the queen did not create the office of
a minister of fashion, the court of Versailles was nevertheless
always crowded with hair dressers, dressmakers, and milliners who exercised
more influence than the King's counselors. Rose Bertown was one
of their numbers. Yeah, she definitely had a huge impact
on fashion and happenings of the day. I mean it
(30:51):
was more than clothes. She was making clothes, but it
was more than clothes. And I just kind of love,
you know, any backstory on fashion designers. Well, and the
first portion of the story that basically going from nothing
to being the primary dressmaker to the clean reminds me
of Don't Laugh, the Katy Perry movie, where we basically
(31:15):
we basically learned that all of her stylists and makeup
people and people making her dresses, a lot of them
are are people that she knew from before she became
really famous, and she kind of brought them to her
crazy outlandish clothing. And now they have makes an entertainment.
Now they have careers in entertainment. Not not so much.
You understand that that connection, you know. And I'm also
(31:35):
quite fond of the Katy Perry movie for reasons that
are somewhat foreign to me as not particularly a fan
of Katy Perry. Yeah, I'm in the same boat. That
was a good movie. Tracy got me to watch it
and it's not historical in any way. But my friend
Alice watched it and was like, everyone should watch this
because you just get to see people genuinely love something
(31:56):
that they're really excited about for an hour and a half.
And you know, I am thankful Alice every time I
think about Katie Perry. Uh. And now, jumping way off
of this stuff, do we have listener mails? We do,
and it's aboutter Everest episode. We got a few. Uh,
we got quite a few emails about Everest, which made
me very happy. Uh. Several were glad that we talked
(32:16):
so much about Tensing orgay, uh, because it's the shirt,
but he doesn't always get mentioned on the same level
as Sir Edmund Hillary. But to me, they're equal, and
I mean definitely they may not in social standing, particularly
from the British point of view, and it was all
going on, have been equals in my head, they're equals. Well,
they both participated in that same feat and they could
(32:40):
not have done it without one another. Yeah, they shared,
to my line, pretty much the same exact experience, so
you can't really mention one and not give the other
equal credits. Uh. However, this came from our listener Katie,
and she says, you're Tracy and Holly. I wanted to
write to you and tell you about my encounter with Everest.
I thought the best way I could do this was
to copy the email that I sent to my friends
(33:00):
on the night I descended from Everest. I won a
competition for an all expenses paid trip to base Camp two.
Here's what I had to say on the night I returned,
and this is her email to her friends. Hi, guys,
hope you're all well. Just a quick update. I have
just descended from six thousand, seven hundred forty fives and
am completely wrecked. I think that I was completely unprepared
for how tough it was, both physically and mentally, and
(33:23):
I certainly had more than a few moments where I
didn't think I was going to keep moving. Out of
the four competition winners, only two of us made it
to six thousand meters. Chia, the other winner, descended almost
immediately due to pretty acute altitude illness. I got to
spend a couple of nights at Everest Camp to at
six thousand, six hundred meters before I made the climb
to six thousand, seven d forty five. I really wanted
(33:45):
to make it to seven thousand, but at that point
my vision was blurring in my left eye and completely
gone in my right eye. Okay, as my asside. When
I read that, I kind of had one of those
holy crap moments because I had not read much about
people's vision failing, and I can't imagine how scary that
would be. Uh So, back to her letter, I hardly
remember anything as the air was so thin, but it
was definitely worth it. I can see why people give
(34:07):
up everything for high altitude climbing, although I certainly don't
think I have the nerve for it. I almost lost
my life every night in the base camps as you
hear nothing but the ice creak and crack beneath your tent,
not to mention feeling pretty sorry for myself in the
freezing temperatures that would also be me. I hate cold.
I was lucky enough to spend some time in the
camps with people who are getting ready to ascend the
(34:29):
summit in the first two weeks of May. They spend
month living on the mountain at a cost of about
forty dollars for a single chance to get to the summit.
Only about them actually make it the rest end up
turning back due to the altitude, the weather, or injuries,
speaking of which I am happy to report I have
only dislocated two fingers, sprained my knee, and infection in
my hand in a bit of a cold. Not too
(34:50):
bad with my track record. I'll be in touch soon.
And then Katie goes on to say to us, it
was a spectacular trip and a once in a lifetime opportunity,
but so dangerous and unforgive being that I'm not sure
I would be able to either do it again or
allow anyone I love to attempt it. Anyway, I thought
you might enjoy this glimpse into a climber's life. Boy
did I? Yeah? That vision thing terrified me. Um. Thank
(35:12):
you so much, Katie, because that's an insight that I
certainly wouldn't have. I don't know anybody personally that's climbed Everest, um,
and I kind of yearned for those. You can read
the people's accounts, but getting well, and pretty much as
soon as the episode came out, we started having people
on Twitter that were like, Hey, meet my friend who Yeah,
some Everest climbing. Yeah. We also had a lot of
(35:33):
people asking us to do a similar episode about Kato.
We might Maybe they might. I think I think that
might depend on whether it's going to sound like Everest
again with a lot of the names changed. Maybe. Yeah,
we'll see. We'll see, is the answer of the time. Yeah,
not because we want to discount anybody's ideas. There's just
(35:54):
there's a lot there's always in it some things, particularly
with episode ideas. There are a lot of things that
we've talked about before. They don't always pan out. In
the early stages of research, you realize like this is
a road that's not really gonna yield any sort of
results that we can really work with. Yeah, the episode
we're going to record next in this particular recording session
being one of it. So thank you again so much, Katie.
(36:17):
That was very very cool. And if you want to
write to us and share your experiences on Everest or
with dressmakers or anything else that you want to share,
you can do so by rating us at History Podcast
at Discovery dot com. You can connect with us on
Facebook at Facebook dot com, slash missed in History, on
Twitter at mist in History, at mist in history dot
(36:37):
tumbler dot com, and at pinterest dot com. Slash missed
in History If you want to learn a little bit
more about what we talked about today, you can go
to how stuff works dot com and type in the
words rose Bertem which is b E R t I
N in the search bar, and you will get an
article that is top five Marie Antoinette scandals because they
do mention her ridiculous spending on her beautiful and amazing
(37:01):
order so much money. If you don't want to spell bartime,
you can put Marie into a net in. But that's
also one that sometimes people have trouble transposing the vowels
and can be a little bit tricky, So that's the scoop.
If you want to research the that or almost anything else,
you can do that at how stuff works dot com
and you can visit us personally at missed in history
dot com. We hope you do both those things for
(37:26):
more on this and thousands of other topics. Because it
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(37:49):
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sign up today.
Welcome to Stuff you Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy Vie Wilson talking about
something I like a lot today. I'm so excited, actually
so in my sort of zone of pet topics. It's
(00:23):
a it's a big it's an intersection of several zones,
it really is. Uh. And the legendary wardrobe of Marie Antoinette,
who is not exactly who we're talking about, but she
does figure prominently in the story. Her wardrobe has been criticized,
it's been envied, it's been discussed to no end by
historians and sociologists. Uh. But where did all those glorious
(00:44):
clothes come from? Is a bigger question. And in large
part they were the work of a woman named Rose
Bertent and her staff and the town was a milliner
who found herself basically the stylus to the queen, and
she enjoyed a level of privilege that even royals were
not really given at that time. Uh. And while there
were certainly other people designing clothes long before, she was
(01:07):
the first to really make this sort of transition from
an anonymous dressmaker, although we'll talk in just a second
about that term uh to a famous dressmaker, to like
basically a famous designer. UH. And this was all because
of the patronage of you know, a famous clothes force.
And a note before we get started, UH, you'll hear
us refer to Rose Berta's throughout the episode as a milliner,
(01:30):
which in today's parlance would mean that she was a
hat maker. But in this time, someone with that title
didn't only make hats. A milliner could be called upon
to make dresses, to add trim and detailing to existing gowns. Sometimes,
like a gown would be brought in to be refreshed
and all the trims would be taken off and new
trims would be put on, and different um alterations would
be made to make it look new and different. Other accessories,
(01:54):
sometimes even gloves and underpinnings, were also within the purview
of a milliner. UH. I use the terms interchangeably as
milliner and dressmaker. Some historians get a little bit prickly
about that um because calling her a dressmaker sort of
seems to devalue her position a little bit. To me,
(02:14):
it's a very important position to be called a dressmaker,
but just so you know, like she's technically a milliner,
that would be her title. Uh, I'm gonna use words interchangeably.
I'm okay with that, And I won't even talk about
We don't go into it, although we do mention one
person related. The millinery trade at this time sometimes had
some negative associations with it, of women working in it
(02:36):
being also applying another trade. At times, it was not
known to be the most virtuous um occupation. Suddenly, this
makes the Seamstress Guild in Terry Pratchett's Discworld books really funny.
I mean, it was funny already, and now you haven't
just told me that it is even more funny. Yeah,
(02:57):
and we'll mention one other person that was kind of
tied to the millinery trade. That will kind of also
make that a little bit clearer and you'll see the
association's uh. But we're not really going into that whole
the ceedy side of it too much should get started.
Absolutely So. Rose was born at Amien, and that was
a city about a hundred and twenty kilometers north of Parents,
and she was born on July second, seventy seven. Her
(03:20):
name when she was born was Marie Jeanne Berton. And
one of the things that's interesting about this time in
history is that people would change their names pretty frequently,
sometimes as a move up the latter thing, and sometimes not.
But you will not hear her refer to that with
that name again. So just heads up. Her parents, Nicholas
and Marie Marguerite Breton, we're not particularly wealthy. Uh. And
(03:43):
in an effort to provide from Marisian and her younger
brother Jean Ran, her mother worked as a sick nurse
to supplement the family income. Is what her father made
didn't really make enough for them to raise and educate
their children, which was something they really um prioritized. There's
a story in meal on glads bertem biography that Rose,
when she was still a child, became just completely obsessed
(04:05):
with having her palm read by a fortune teller who
was reported to be extremely insightful and was also imprisoned nearby.
And so since she had no money, Rose allegedly starved
starved herself so that she could bring food to the
fortune teller in exchange for having her palm read. Uh.
The reading was rendered, and according to the tale, the
(04:27):
young girl was told that she would quote Rise to
great fortune and one day where a court dress. Yeah,
it's interesting. Uh. That biography, by the way, which will
reference a few more times and was one of the
big sources for this, was written in and I, Uh,
he did a lot of digging through records to get
a lot of stuff, a lot of the details and
(04:48):
the the data about her existence and some of the
numbers and stuff. Right, but there is a little bit
of flourish, So I immediately kind of questioned this story,
but it's the interesting one to include this idea that
she was kind of obsessive and willing to do what
she had to do to achieve what she wanted. Rose's father, Nicholas,
(05:11):
died on January seventeen fifty four, and that left the
family to survive as best they could on his wife's income.
She was still working as a sick nurse and the
family struggled, but Rose always assisted her mother whenever possible.
She was not a girl that was afraid of hard work,
so when she was only sixteen, Rose decided to move
(05:32):
to Paris. She was smart and pretty and decided to
use her charms to secure a position as an apprentice
at a millinery shop, and the shop was called trade Gallant,
which translates to gallant stroke or gallant feature. And this
shop was run by Mademoiselle Pageot, and it was already
a supplier of accessories to the courts of France and Spain,
(05:53):
so it was really quite a good position to get into.
Around this same time, a young woman named Jean Key
was also an apprentice at another millinary shop, which was
run by Mademoiselle Labby Uh and Jean Biqu would later
find her way into the name Madame Duberry and set
her own place in history as King Louis the fifteenth Mistress. Yeah,
(06:16):
that's kind of one of those tie ins of a
woman who maybe was not super virtuous working in the
millinary trade. Still laughing about the seamsters skilled Uh and
Rose had not been working for very long for Mademoiselle
when she was dispatched one evening to make a delivery
to the Princess de Conti, And while she was at
(06:36):
the princess's residence, she made small talk with a woman
that she believed to be a chambermaid. So, of course
it turns out that she was actually talking to the princess,
and Rose was just hugely embarrassed at her gaff, and
she apologized profusely. The Princess, who had found her to
be just quite charming, reassured her that no ill had
(06:58):
been done, her identity had not been made a parent.
The princess also promised ongoing goodwill towards britand on her part, yeah,
that was a good friend to have made, even though
it was accidental and maybe definitely also embarrassing. Yeah, and
the story is related in a way that she showed
up and it was quite late in the evening, and
(07:18):
this woman was already kind of dressed down. She was
definitely not in robes that would suggest her position at all.
So that's why Rose thought, oh, it's just a mate,
just chat while we wait for other people to come
and look at these gowns I've brought. And then it
was not the case at all, um, And the Princess's
fondness for this young milliner was almost immediately manifest. Soon
(07:39):
after the two men and this embarrassing but fundamentally beneficial
event took place, a royal marriage between a Duke de
Shot and Louise Marie led de Bourbon was arranged, and
Rose at her new royal friends recommendation was called upon
to make the bride's true show. She's like a huge
get in turn. Yeah, that's a big deal. This was
(08:03):
a really lucrative bridal order, and it not only brought
Rose into the favor of the royals, who would all
need clothing and accessories, but it also elevated her position
in the shop. Mademoiselle Pagelle made Rose a partner in
the in the millinery shop, and from this point on
Rose's royal patrons only grew in number. The Duchess de
(08:24):
Shapla became a protectress. She, like the Princess de Conti,
looked out for Rose and really helped along her business interests. Unfortunately,
the Duke du Shot also took an interest in Rose
and uh really pursued her very diligently in the hopes
of a romantic relationship, but she really was not having
(08:44):
that at all. Whether this is because she was loyal
to her customer, the Duchess, or simply because she just
was not interested in the man is is basically unclear,
but either way, she had no time for that business
was her response. And rumors of a plot that the
Duke had concocted to kidnap Rose and take her away
(09:05):
to a country house to sort of force her to
become his mistress. Reached the Milliner she found out about them,
but it made her constantly fearful that, you know, at
any moment someone was going to pop out from around
the corner and snatch her and take her away to
the country. Sounds terrible, it really does. Just trying to
do her work her alone, trying to take your wife's clothes.
(09:25):
Please get out of my way. So one day Rose
was visiting the comtest du son about an order, and
the Duke came and also made this appearance. She refused
to get out of receipt when the Duke entered, and
when the Countess questioned her about why she was acting
this way, she was straight up front about it. She
explained that the Duke had clearly forgotten his place in
(09:47):
pursuit of her, and so she would not honor their
societal gap. Yeah, She's like, when he remembers his place,
I will treat him like he belongs in that place.
Just kind of a wonderfully sassy and just to do
it in front of one of his you know, social
equals was very cool. People get mad sometimes and we
talk about how much we love the people were talking about.
(10:08):
But this is at the moment when the switch goes
to I love her. Uh. And the Duke was caught
in his game in front of this pier, and he
did not deny it. But he did call Rose a
little serpent. I saw it was by the same translator
of this biography, and one he called her a viper,
and one he called her a serpent, like two different
(10:29):
um translations by the same person. So but the important
thing is that he left her alone after that, kind
of gave up his pursuit. Uh. And before we get
to the next step in Rose's career, do you want
to pause for a moment and have a word from
a sponsor. Yes. So back to Rose Bertin. As her
popularity with the royal class group, she sort of outgrew
(10:49):
her position with Mademoiselle Pegette. So the Duchess was in
the habit of assisting young women in their entrepreneurial efforts,
and she had already given Rose her favor. So with
the Uchess's financial backing, Rose set up her shop a
Grand Mogul in the Rude Descent Honoree, and in addition
to bankrolling this enterprise, the Duchess de Hipload also used
(11:11):
her position to send business Rose's way and kind of
anchors Rosa's pr agent within the royal class, which she
had already been doing to some degree, but once she
had financially set up this business, she really wanted it
to succeed. In seventeen seventy, the Duchess met with Madame
Dannaya and Madame the Misery, and these were the lady
in waiting in first chambermaid who had been selected to
(11:32):
attend the new Dolphine, who was Marie Antoinette. The Duchess
praised Rosa's skills and personality and suggested that she'd be
chosen to make the ensemble that the new Princess would
change into at Strasburg border crossing as she stepped onto
French soil and became a woman of France. Yes, so,
(11:53):
just in case anybody doesn't know that hasn't seen the
movies about Marie Antoinette, etcetera. When she crossed from Austria
into France, she changed all of her clothes, she changed
everything so that she would emerge onto French soil as
a French princess and leave Austria behind. And so Rose
made that outfit that she changed into, which is a
huge deal because that was also the outfit that most
(12:14):
people would see her in for the first time, sort
of her arrival ensemble symbolic and also actually important. And
the lobbying of the Duchess's chapla, along with similar please
from other royals that Barton had won over as clients,
actually got the young entrepreneur her order and the first
exposure to her of her work to the new Princess. So,
(12:37):
in addition to it being important because it was a
huge imagery issue for France, it also gave the woman
who would be queen her first taste of French clothing,
so it was important on many levels. Yeah, so bertend
soon got her first in person introduction to the princess
from Austria. It's entirely likely that the talented but also
(13:00):
business savvy milliner was just completely aware of the opportunity
that was presenting itself to her. If she pleased the
new Dolphine, all of France would be clamoring for her work,
and thanks again to the high praise that her existing
clientele gave her, fine, she was awarded a royal order
for the Princess in the amount of two twenty thousand livres,
(13:21):
which is worth roughly four thousand dollars at the time.
So that's in seventeen seventy two, so that is a
huge fortune really, So we should point out that this
rise to the favor of the queen was not like
an instantaneous process. Marie Antoinette had arrived in France in
seventeen seventy and it was seventeen seventy two when Britague
got her first order. There were a lot more to
(13:43):
come after that though. The Dauphine's clothing allowance in seventy
seventeen seventy two was one hundred and twenty thousand livres annually,
and that's roughly twenty four thousand dollars, very very roughly,
but about one order of that money. I mean, even
in today's money, if you just told me you have
twenty four dollars to spend on clothes this year, I'd
(14:05):
be like, right on high five, I'm laughing. I would
show up to work in a ball gown every day, um,
But about one quarter of that expense was allocated for
quote ordinary dresses, like the dresses she would just wear
in her day to day life. If there was nothing
important to do, just highly unlikely when you are a dauphine,
because then three quarters of that was designated for extraordinary expenses,
(14:27):
i e. Fancy pants, unicorn dresses, like all of the
big You're going to an event, you're being presented at X,
Y or Z, You're going to meet another member of
royalty from another country that's here with an envoy, any
of those types of things. So that already is a
lot of money. In October of seventeen seventy four, Marie
Ants when it's clothing allowance rose to two hundred thousand libra. Yeah. Again,
(14:55):
it's almost doubling it from before. I mean not quite almost,
but almost. It brings it to I mean I'm doing
quick math in my head and brings it to close
to at the time still, I mean it's like a
million dollar budget. Now. I could not find a good
comparison of like what that would equal. It's really hard
to compare dollar amount well, and especially because livra no
longer exists as a form of currency, so tricky. But
(15:18):
once Marie Antoinette became queen, she uh. In her first
year as queen, she accrued in a debt of three
hundred thousand livre in clothing expenses, and the King did
not actually know she was racking up quite that much,
but she did it just the same. So the vast
majority of this money was going right to Rose Berton.
(15:41):
And so this sounds incredibly lucrative, and it is. It
was only a small portion of the money that she
was making through her shop. So that where the Dauphine
and then Queen went for her gowns and her accessories,
that was where everyone wanted to go. Yeah, I mean
Bartana really had kind of become this huge um business
(16:01):
juggernaut in a way, because you know, and we should
I shouldn't I mischaracterized when I wrote in the notes
that it's like a small part of her business. It
was a huge part of her business. But she was
getting a lot of business on top of that. So
I mean millions of dollars in the very vague equivalent
of today's money being spent in this one millinery shop
(16:23):
on clothes by the royal class. Uh. And we talked
about Mary Antoinette becoming queen, and we should talk about
her coronation gown because it was quite something and it
was a betime creation. So Traditionally, the clothing choices for
the male royals and attendance at a coronation ceremony would
(16:44):
be in a style which evoked no specific era or
style of dress. Of course, neither Murray Antoinette nor Rose
Bertan would agree to that idea at all. Yeah, And additionally,
I mean they kind of had this this room to
argue about it, or argue their case because a royal
(17:04):
consort had not been part of a coronation since Catherine
de Medici in seven. There had been several bachelor kings
in a row on the French throne. So uh, there
was more than a two hundred year long lag since
the last lady in Marie Antoinette's position, and there wasn't
a convention to follow based on that, And so the
Dauphine and her designer kind of took advantage of that
(17:26):
gap in protocol to go, all right, we're making a
huge gown and it's going to be ridiculous and wonderful.
That ridiculous and wonderful, is right. The gown Bertemp made
for Marie Antoinette to where it was encrusted with jewels,
including many many sapphires, and also heavy embroidery. This made
the garment enormously heavy. Uh. The dressmaker slash designer tried
(17:49):
to arrange a special carriage just to take it to
the seam to be clean. Yeah, I don't know that
she was granted that wish and Marie Antoinette was placed
on a special stand and to view the ceremony. And
I don't know if you know load bearing issues were
part of that because of this gown, she couldn't really
(18:09):
walk around in it. Yeah, gowns of this era were
already extremely heavy compared to what we wear today. Yeah,
this would be extraordinarily heavy on top of that already heavy, Yeah,
I mean it would not be People probably have the
image of the big, wide hipped you know, the penny
a U shaped gowns. It's not uncommon for those to
(18:31):
take twenty yards of fabric just because of the many
layers and the the shape of it is so wide,
it's so on top of the weight of twenty yards
of fabric is the weight of Heaven only knows the
value of all of those jewels and heavy like gold
bouyon embroidery, which is very heavy on its own, and
(18:52):
then underpinning in case that was not enough. Yes, so
it was a significant achievement and clothing engineering, I would
even say so. As the crowds followed Marie Antoninette in style,
Briton was able to develop this rather ingenious way to
just keep the money flowing in. She would take the
(19:13):
orders from the rest of the royals for gowns that
were similar to the ones of the Queen war And
as the Queen saw more and more people dressed like her,
she would get tired of that and want something new
and different. Yes, so Britton would design new styles for
her majesty. You know, she also had a hand in
in the hairstyle, so there was lifting the hair higher,
there was shifting the drape of a skirt by bustling
(19:34):
at all, a polonaise, accenting with feathers, et cetera. And
with each of these changes that kind of updated the style,
the masses would follow and the Queen would again want
something new. So she kind of developed this perfect cycle
of just continuous orders planned obsolescence of royal clothing. So
smart it was really an effective business model. Her shop
(19:56):
stayed busy with an array of clients wanting all the
latest style, while she simultaneously worked on fashions for the
Queen that we're going to become the next big style
and bring the same people right back to her for
a wardrobe update. And in France and particularly the Court
of France at the time, to be out of date
on your style was really an embarrassment and could really
(20:16):
affect you socially, which is ridiculous, but that's how it works, uh.
And Bartag normally visited the Queen twice a week and
she would discuss new designs. She would review sketches and textiles.
They would talk about the styling and accessorizing that was
going to accompany individual looks. Uh. And so she really
became her stylist, and in many regards, even though there
(20:37):
were other people making clothes for the Queen as well.
If that can just blow your mind some more hundreds
of gowns a year um. But this level of access
to the Queen that Bartag had would normally be absolutely
unheard of for someone outside the royal circle. But Briant
to win It's obsession with fashion afforded the millinery these
special privileges, and it also earned bear Town the nickname
(20:59):
Minister Fashion. Among Marie Antoinette's critics she was really getting
land based in the press a lot as being the
source of waste or one of the purveyors of waste
in the the royal court, that she they had realized
she had figured out this wonderful way to keep money
coming in constantly, and that she was purposely kind of
(21:19):
putting an expiration date on everything by making similar copies
of dresses. Uh. And they they really kind of lampooned
her in the press. So it's important to remember that
while Barton was benefiting financially from her relationship with the
Queen and the Queen's circle, the real benefit was this
so called protection that she had been offered by so
(21:40):
many of them. So for example, at one point, one
of Breton's relatives, who was a widow making her living
as a bookseller, was arrested for selling pamphlets that satirized
public officials in seventeen seventy three. Breton was able to
just call up all of her friends among the royalty
for help. So first her relative was released from the Bestie,
(22:01):
but at her sentencing she was exiled from Paris for
five years as a punishment, and Barton continued to campaign
on behalf of the bookseller. After this, this sentencing happened,
and thanks to pressure from Marie Antoinette and other ladies
of the court, that sentence was overturned a month after
it was issued. So not only did this woman wind
(22:21):
up being freed, but then she was invited to dine
with the Queen and she became the court bookseller, which
was a position that she held until the Revolution ousted
Louis the sixteenth from his seat. And in another instance,
during a royal procession through Paris en route to an
event which had many carriages in it, the Queen, seeing
(22:41):
Barton and her staff on the balcony of the shop
in rutissent, Honore acknowledged her dressmaker, which is a huge
honor for you know, a queen to point you out
and kind of nod to you in one of these processions,
and this resulted in every carriage after that of the
King and Queen also having to acknowledge her. Uh. Apparently,
Barton spent the day basically curteyed carriages, and on at
(23:05):
least two equate occasions, the Queen also arranged for Barton
to be led to a better seat at the theater
when she was when she realized that her stylist was
sitting in a less than stellar position to enjoy the entertainment.
So Barton had really achieved an unprecedented level, like an
unprecedented rise from her beginnings to where she ended up
once she had the favor of the Queen. So to
(23:28):
be granted these kinds of favor, favors and especially with
this much regularity by those in the highest positions of society,
was quite an accomplishment for this, you know, girl from
I'm Young. So other women such as Madame Duberry, who
we talked about earlier, had basically slept their way to
the top of French society. Breton had used her entrepreneurial
(23:50):
skill to get there. Yeah, which really says quite a
bit about her and support the idea of how very
smart she was. Uh. And as she cemented her place
as a milan or to the nobility, she did have
a little bit of uh that thing that often happens
to people when they get famous really quickly. She got
a little bit of a superior attitude sometimes. Uh. There
(24:13):
are tales of her telling clients that she was going
to delay their orders because she and the Queen had
decided that a style should not be debuted until later,
and she would sometimes shrug off customers of lower rank
by selling them fashions that were out of date, even
though wearing them would be social suicide. Like there's one
tale of a nobleman who is trying to get a
(24:35):
hat for a relative or a friend who is from
the country, and she's like, sell them on the last
month's hats. Yeah. So she really was just kind of
saying like, you're unimportant, I don't really care about you,
which is a terrible way to do business. But she
had so much she kind of felt like she could
make these, uh, less than ideal statements to people. She
(24:57):
also is said to have responded to criticis is hum
from people by reminding them that her work was good
enough for the Queen. I personally have no problem with
her saying this. Yeah, it sounds like she was pretty
petulant about it, though, where someone said, oh, you know
this dress, uh, this bodice isn't quite right, and she'd
be like, it's good enough with the Queen. Yeah. It's
(25:18):
kind of a snooty, petuity way to do it. I
can't understand it in point of fact, but uh. She
would also turn down work for the wives of white
collar workers, so like if a lawyer's wife came to her,
she'd be like, I don't really need your business. Uh.
This backfired on her though, because one of her employees,
UH set up shop for herself and made a pretty
good living catering to the customers that Bartang cast off,
(25:40):
and they became rivals to some degree. And after an
altercation where the furious Barton allegedly spat in the face
of this former employee, there was a dramatic legal battle.
So her snobbery kind of bit her on the tail.
So Mademoiselle Pico, who was the former employee, said that
she was so shocked by Bertime's behavior that she passed out.
(26:02):
Britag countered that she had never behaved in such a manner.
The initial judgment found Bertag guilty, but she appealed, and
at this point the Queen intervened, So not only was
the previous judgment overturned, but Mademoiselle Pico was also ordered
to pay the expenses that were associated with the appeal.
So yet another example of where it was really good
for Barton to have all these friends in high places.
(26:23):
So because of her close association with the Queen and
the Queen's circle. It is probably no surprise that as
the revolution shifted the balance of power in France, it
also shifted Birtann's fortunes. Even after the royal family was
in custody of the National Assembly, Britang continued to deliver
gowns to the Queen, although they were much simpler than
what she'd been making before. And these deliveries, uh, it's
(26:48):
worth pointing out we're definitely an act of devotion. So
at the time, the Milliner, having lost her social standing
in large part, was also having trouble collecting debts from
other clients. And so even though her finances as we're
starting to crumble, she still clothed the dethroned queen like
she was still very appreciative of their relationship. Once Marie
An's when it was executed, Pretend, realizing that things were
(27:10):
not going to go well for her, fled to London.
She set up a shop there and catered to many
of her previous patrons from France who had also fled.
She did return to France a couple of years later, though,
in but she had no career at the level that
she had once known. To go back to her name
was associated still with Louis the sixteenth of Marianntoinette, and
(27:31):
the styles of dresses that she really excelled at were
no longer fashionable. Uh. The fashion dolls that she had
once made as miniature versions of her fashion designs, which
would be sent out sort of as three D catalogs
for people to see. Like it was almost like if
you picture a fashion doll today in a beautiful gown,
and you would go, I want that gown. Um. They
became popular as collectible, so she was still making those
(27:54):
and she was still making a living. It wasn't like
she was a pariah, but she was really never able
to return to the level of success that she had
known during Louis the sixteenth reign. Eventually, Louie Nicola Berta,
who was Rose's nephew, was set up in her old
shop and he sold Linen's and other fancy articles. Rose
still owned the shop, but she was mired in ongoing
(28:15):
efforts to settle all the old pre revolution debts, and
in the early eighteen hundreds, is she had gotten older,
Rose would occasionally still sell small orders to royals who
remembered her as a broker of the most elegant styles,
but these really served to kind of stroke her ego
more than they filled her pocketbook. While she struggled financially,
(28:36):
Rose also offered her services to old friends as favors.
She never really pressed them for payment. It's like all
of her wiles that she had used to make such
a huge fortune stopped being part of her her operating plan. Yeah. Uh.
You know, while she was at the height of her career,
(28:56):
really difficult and judgmental by some people's descriptions, she seemed
to soften a lot after the Revolution took the wind
out of her sales. And I think she saw a
sort of camaraderie with these people that were in a
similar boat, of like, we had this life and now
everything has changed, and now we're kind of all in
this together, and let's take care of each other with dresses,
with beautiful clothes. Uh. Sadly, Rose died on September twenty eight,
(29:21):
thirteen in the village of Epinay, where she owned land
and spent her time away from Paris. She was sixty six,
and while she was certainly no longer famous the way
she had been in her heyday, her obituary did run
in numerous papers, and there were many kind remembrances written
about both her style and her generosity, particularly later in life,
(29:42):
although even before she became famous, people would talk about
how how sweet she was and how she was very kind.
So it seems like she kind of became a little
bit of a tyrant for a brief period when she
was super wildly popular, uh, and then that shifted back
to sort of her her more natural nature. Her two nephews,
Claude Charlemagne and Nicholas, and two nieces discovered that there
were still many uncollected debts that were owed to Barton,
(30:06):
and so after she died they did manage to recover
some of that money for the estate, but it took
several decades. They really had to work quite diligently to
collect any of that money. In the introduction to the
biography that we referenced earlier by Emil Langelade, he wrote,
the reign of Marie Antoinette was one of futility and chiffon,
(30:28):
and if the queen did not create the office of
a minister of fashion, the court of Versailles was nevertheless
always crowded with hair dressers, dressmakers, and milliners who exercised
more influence than the King's counselors. Rose Bertown was one
of their numbers. Yeah, she definitely had a huge impact
on fashion and happenings of the day. I mean it
(30:51):
was more than clothes. She was making clothes, but it
was more than clothes. And I just kind of love,
you know, any backstory on fashion designers. Well, and the
first portion of the story that basically going from nothing
to being the primary dressmaker to the clean reminds me
of Don't Laugh, the Katy Perry movie, where we basically
(31:15):
we basically learned that all of her stylists and makeup
people and people making her dresses, a lot of them
are are people that she knew from before she became
really famous, and she kind of brought them to her
crazy outlandish clothing. And now they have makes an entertainment.
Now they have careers in entertainment. Not not so much.
You understand that that connection, you know. And I'm also
(31:35):
quite fond of the Katy Perry movie for reasons that
are somewhat foreign to me as not particularly a fan
of Katy Perry. Yeah, I'm in the same boat. That
was a good movie. Tracy got me to watch it
and it's not historical in any way. But my friend
Alice watched it and was like, everyone should watch this
because you just get to see people genuinely love something
(31:56):
that they're really excited about for an hour and a half.
And you know, I am thankful Alice every time I
think about Katie Perry. Uh. And now, jumping way off
of this stuff, do we have listener mails? We do,
and it's aboutter Everest episode. We got a few. Uh,
we got quite a few emails about Everest, which made
me very happy. Uh. Several were glad that we talked
(32:16):
so much about Tensing orgay, uh, because it's the shirt,
but he doesn't always get mentioned on the same level
as Sir Edmund Hillary. But to me, they're equal, and
I mean definitely they may not in social standing, particularly
from the British point of view, and it was all
going on, have been equals in my head, they're equals. Well,
they both participated in that same feat and they could
(32:40):
not have done it without one another. Yeah, they shared,
to my line, pretty much the same exact experience, so
you can't really mention one and not give the other
equal credits. Uh. However, this came from our listener Katie,
and she says, you're Tracy and Holly. I wanted to
write to you and tell you about my encounter with Everest.
I thought the best way I could do this was
to copy the email that I sent to my friends
(33:00):
on the night I descended from Everest. I won a
competition for an all expenses paid trip to base Camp two.
Here's what I had to say on the night I returned,
and this is her email to her friends. Hi, guys,
hope you're all well. Just a quick update. I have
just descended from six thousand, seven hundred forty fives and
am completely wrecked. I think that I was completely unprepared
for how tough it was, both physically and mentally, and
(33:23):
I certainly had more than a few moments where I
didn't think I was going to keep moving. Out of
the four competition winners, only two of us made it
to six thousand meters. Chia, the other winner, descended almost
immediately due to pretty acute altitude illness. I got to
spend a couple of nights at Everest Camp to at
six thousand, six hundred meters before I made the climb
to six thousand, seven d forty five. I really wanted
(33:45):
to make it to seven thousand, but at that point
my vision was blurring in my left eye and completely
gone in my right eye. Okay, as my asside. When
I read that, I kind of had one of those
holy crap moments because I had not read much about
people's vision failing, and I can't imagine how scary that
would be. Uh So, back to her letter, I hardly
remember anything as the air was so thin, but it
was definitely worth it. I can see why people give
(34:07):
up everything for high altitude climbing, although I certainly don't
think I have the nerve for it. I almost lost
my life every night in the base camps as you
hear nothing but the ice creak and crack beneath your tent,
not to mention feeling pretty sorry for myself in the
freezing temperatures that would also be me. I hate cold.
I was lucky enough to spend some time in the
camps with people who are getting ready to ascend the
(34:29):
summit in the first two weeks of May. They spend
month living on the mountain at a cost of about
forty dollars for a single chance to get to the summit.
Only about them actually make it the rest end up
turning back due to the altitude, the weather, or injuries,
speaking of which I am happy to report I have
only dislocated two fingers, sprained my knee, and infection in
my hand in a bit of a cold. Not too
(34:50):
bad with my track record. I'll be in touch soon.
And then Katie goes on to say to us, it
was a spectacular trip and a once in a lifetime opportunity,
but so dangerous and unforgive being that I'm not sure
I would be able to either do it again or
allow anyone I love to attempt it. Anyway, I thought
you might enjoy this glimpse into a climber's life. Boy
did I? Yeah? That vision thing terrified me. Um. Thank
(35:12):
you so much, Katie, because that's an insight that I
certainly wouldn't have. I don't know anybody personally that's climbed Everest, um,
and I kind of yearned for those. You can read
the people's accounts, but getting well, and pretty much as
soon as the episode came out, we started having people
on Twitter that were like, Hey, meet my friend who Yeah,
some Everest climbing. Yeah. We also had a lot of
(35:33):
people asking us to do a similar episode about Kato.
We might Maybe they might. I think I think that
might depend on whether it's going to sound like Everest
again with a lot of the names changed. Maybe. Yeah,
we'll see. We'll see, is the answer of the time. Yeah,
not because we want to discount anybody's ideas. There's just
(35:54):
there's a lot there's always in it some things, particularly
with episode ideas. There are a lot of things that
we've talked about before. They don't always pan out. In
the early stages of research, you realize like this is
a road that's not really gonna yield any sort of
results that we can really work with. Yeah, the episode
we're going to record next in this particular recording session
being one of it. So thank you again so much, Katie.
(36:17):
That was very very cool. And if you want to
write to us and share your experiences on Everest or
with dressmakers or anything else that you want to share,
you can do so by rating us at History Podcast
at Discovery dot com. You can connect with us on
Facebook at Facebook dot com, slash missed in History, on
Twitter at mist in History, at mist in history dot
(36:37):
tumbler dot com, and at pinterest dot com. Slash missed
in History If you want to learn a little bit
more about what we talked about today, you can go
to how stuff works dot com and type in the
words rose Bertem which is b E R t I
N in the search bar, and you will get an
article that is top five Marie Antoinette scandals because they
do mention her ridiculous spending on her beautiful and amazing
(37:01):
order so much money. If you don't want to spell bartime,
you can put Marie into a net in. But that's
also one that sometimes people have trouble transposing the vowels
and can be a little bit tricky, So that's the scoop.
If you want to research the that or almost anything else,
you can do that at how stuff works dot com
and you can visit us personally at missed in history
dot com. We hope you do both those things for
(37:26):
more on this and thousands of other topics. Because it
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