Merveilleuse Quatorze Juillet

Happy Bastille Day, dear readers!

I actually have a lazy, indoor day planned today but thought I would share with you my outfit I wore to an event a couple of years ago. Prepare yourself... (for lots of words and some philosophy)

Not content with cliches (stripy shirts, berets and baguettes, I'm looking at you), my friend and I went for semi-political, surrealist-inspired outfits. I was dressed as a "merveilleuse", one of the members of the aristocracy or nouveau riche who reacted against seeing hundreds of their kind beheaded in the French Revolution by becoming all the more extravagant. In addition to sticking two fingers up at the Revolutionaries, I suppose it was similar to the hedonism and devil-may-care attitude of wartime, when you know you could be next so you may as well party hard until you meet your fate.

The merveilleuses favoured an "a la Grecque" dress style, like Greek goddesses with simple, flowing white dresses and Empire lines, often with their hair in a loose, natural style. They would sometimes wear a red choker to symbolise their solidarity with those that had been beheaded, or have their hair cut very short, in reference to hair being hacked off before someone went to the guillotine. They were aristocratic punks, basically, dressing in a way that intentionally riled the system and expressed their discontent - but the system that was coming in, rather than the established one.

(Image source)

My only problem was that, when I got the outfit together, I felt like I was perhaps doing the "a la Grecque" thing too well, and just kind of looked like I was dressed up as a Greek goddess and had got my national days confused... So, to counteract that, I got some lipstick and wrote across my chest: 

... which fans of surrealist art may pick up as being a reference to Magritte:

Rene Magritte 'LaTrahison des Images', 1929 (Image source)

Of course, put very simply, Magritte's point was that the image you see before you may appear to be a pipe but is, in reality, only a representation of the object; hence, "this is not a pipe". So, in using it in a costume, the same question was being posed. Yes, I am dressed as a merveilleuse so you could say I was one, but I am really just dressed up so I am merely a representation. Also, it made a question of whether I was an anti-monarchist or a pro-monarchist. Is the statement about the fact that I am in costume or is it saying that I don't agree with the merveilleuses?

Finally, the "R" was left out of "merveilleuse" because they often left this letter out in referring to themselves, as a statement against the Revolution. Aware that it might just look like a spelling mistake if I left it out, I put the dash in there... which just added an extra layer of meaning as it became an allusion to Hang Man, the game where you come closer and closer to execution (albeit of a different kind) with each incorrect guess of a letter. The game puts much more significance on single letters than is normal, like the significance placed on "R" as the first letter of the Revolution.

Are you sufficiently reeling from the explanation of my outfit yet? This was all encouraged and nurtured by my amazing friend, who is very knowledgeable on philosophy and psychology. She is also a big fan of French Rococo, so had an amazing outfit of pastels and bouffant, but wearing a Sex Pistols "God Save the Queen" t-shirt. So, her outfit, like mine, became an enigma - she was basically dressed in the aristocratic style of the Revolutionary period, but it was deconstructed and punked up. The statement on her t-shirt appeared, at surface level, to support the monarchy but, as a Sex Pistols t-shirt, may have equally been ironic.

(Image source)

Although I'm now feeling tempted to go out and buy some La Duree macarons and visit the Wallace Collection in celebration of the day, I'm going to stick to my plan of visiting my local French cafe and watching The Extraordinary Adventures of Adele Blanc-Sec tonight (thanks, Hannah, for making me think of that idea!).