Marie-Antoinette was a big fashion icon during her time as dauphine, meaning crown princess, and queen of France. When we are talking about the fashion during the 18^th century, and earlier we are not just talking about the clothes but also about what they wore at their heads, and then we are talking about wigs. During that time almost everybody; both men and women, at the French court wore those wigs. Marie-Antoinette wasn’t a big fan of them, which meant that she instead had to spend almost the double time at her hairdressing as the other ladies. The wigs could be in different sizes and they had thing in them, such as feathers and rosettes. They used powder made of flour, talc, all kinds of white muds, bone meal, gypsum, flour of eggshell, skirret and beans to powder their wigs.

I think that those wigs maybe were a good and fun way to express whom you were during that time. For example a pregnant woman could have a little crib in her wig. But in other cases I think that wearing those wigs was kind of stupid. I don’t think that they could have been all too comfortable to wear. We also have to consider all the flour that they used just to make their wigs look good. They used up to a half-kilo every week. If they instead had used that flour to give the people food maybe some, which died in starvation, had survived. I think that they were kind of inventive in all ways that they used to make their wigs powered. It’s interesting how the wigs changed, like the fashion today. For example; the length of the wigs differed from time to time. The wigs become shorter and shorter during the 18^th century. The colour of the powder could also differ from time to time; they could have both purple and yellow hair if that was what the fashion was during that particular time. One thing that really surprises me is that they could have flowers in their wigs, the flowers survived because they had bottles with water inside of their wigs. I have to say that I think that was the point when it all came to be exaggerated. It’s just so unnaturally and stupid. I think that it must be some limit for what you do to follow fashion. Like the fact that they sat up when they slept, they did not mind, because it showed that you were rich and that could afford to have those kinds of wigs. That is stupid. Maybe it was not the wigs that were stupid but the people whom wore the wigs, it could have been a fun way to express them selves but instead it became really exaggerated.

/Ebba Jakobsson van Stam