Gallerie des Modes et Costumes Français, 1781, pp 227 : Coëffure à la Rethel-mazarin (...) 1781

Curator: Looking at this engraving, I am struck by how ephemeral yet enduring fashion can be as a symbol. What are your first impressions? Editor: My eye is immediately drawn to the elaborate hairstyles! Each portrait seems to compete for height and extravagance, all those towering arrangements of hair, feathers, and ribbons, enclosed by austere borders. Curator: Indeed! What we are viewing is plate 227 from Gallerie des Modes et Costumes Français, an engraving from 1781, currently held at the Rijksmuseum. The artist is Claude Louis Desrais. Each coiffure is labeled by name beneath its miniature portrait. It represents a moment of great social and economic disparity in France just before the revolution, a time when fashion served as an expression of elitism. Editor: You're right, the decadence is practically screaming! And those names, evocative as titles! They seem less like descriptions of styles and more like statements of identity, performances of status and access in the late 18th century. I can’t help thinking of what these styles symbolized at the time—the exploitation of labor, the use of imported fineries while the masses suffered. The almost grotesque extravagance. Curator: Precisely. Consider how women of the era, through elaborate adornment, paradoxically showcased both power and objectification. Fashionable appearance dictated social worth. We see, perhaps, a moment where artifice became more ‘real’ than the bodies beneath these constructions. And let us remember that a culture of print helped distribute fashion ideas widely. Editor: Absolutely. The symbolic weight of each towering coiffure... the sheer quantity of signifiers, all layered on the heads of these women, seems almost satirical in retrospect. A poignant, albeit indirect, commentary on the inequalities defining their era. Curator: A fleeting snapshot, enshrined within cultural memory. Editor: And a sharp reminder that fashion is always already political, intentional, meaningful.