This isn't some old post that I've dug up from 2006-7 when Marie Antoinette-themed posts were rife (actually could she in fact earn the title of most fashion-blogged-about historical figure?), coming in thick and fast due to the release of the film. This is actually a good kind of deja vu because the theme has once again been worked into a juxtaposition of contemporary and the historical, with this video for LA-based Acid Girls. Apologies if muso bloggers are looking at this thinking this is OLLLLLLD (What dates faster than fashion? A hot MP3 track that does the rounds in a matter of hours...) but I couldn't resist after the costume designer of the video emailed me. Bryan Hearns made ALL of these costumes in a week whilst he was still studying at the Fashion Institute of Design and Technology in Los Angeles which is a mind boggling feat in itself. He has now moved to New York to work on his own work as well as more costumes for a Lady Gaga fan video. Ah of course...the intrinsic and natural link between music video costume and the Gaga...
But back to the cool factor of 18th century French mantua dressess, cakes and pastel colours - it seems a bit simplistic to attribute this all to Sofia Coppola putting Bow Wow Wow and Versailles together into a pot yet it is undeniable that the film has left an indelible mark on a wider audience taking to 18th century rococo style with great enthusiasm. As somebody who has been reading historical biographies since I learnt what biography meant (I think I'm a nosy parker who thinks it's better to nose into people who are dead...), of course Antonia Fraser's Marie Antoinette was high on my guilty reading list when I was at uni (guilty because tutors condemned this sort of 'frivolous' history writing). It therefore fascinated me to no end when in 2006, when I started this whole blogging malarky, the outpourings of love for Marie Antoinette, or rather the stylised aesthetics of her time were so rampant and predictably nothing to do with a love for that period but rather, how it was so stylishly portrayed on screen.
I wonder if she had made a film about Eleanor of Aquitaine, would we be loving long velvet robes, side plaits and medieval feasts instead. All without any taint of political and socio context of course - though if erasing politics and all that 'boring' stuff from Marie Antoinette's tale was a doddle, perhaps taking away all of Eleanor's political marriage trials is also a simple task. Well, this is all theory anyway... it wasn't the 12th century that was picked for a Coppola treatment and it IS the late 18th century that has taken the prize for a historical period with the most amount of blogger-lovin'. This isn't me complaining by the by. I too always fall prey to the theme no matter what visual treatment it is given - my posting over twenty of these images from the set of the video is testament to that weakness. May the theme continue to flourish in its various filtered forms... though should another historical period want to try and get in on all this fashion blogger action, might I suggest the time of Catherine de' Medici... yes, I'm a dumbass who has JUST recently seen La Reine Margo...oh, the cycle begins again...
**EDIT** Went back and mulled this over a bit more so the text has been expanded... early morning posting is not advised.
(All photos by Ceaesar Sebastian from Flickr)
