Let Them Eat Cake

A woolly vest for Marie-Antoinette, lest she get chilly

I’m sure everyone is familiar with the words “Let them eat cake” or to quote its original form “Qu’ils mangent de la brioche”, words often attributed to Marie-Antoinette, the last Queen of France who was executed by guillotine following the French Revolution, although it is unlikely they were ever spoken by her. Because cake is considered more decadent and luxurious than bread this quotation is conveniently cited as an example of how oblivious Marie-Antoinette was to the poverty experienced in the daily lives of ordinary people, who could not even afford a crust of bread, never mind a slice of cake. But there is no historical evidence that she ever said it and it is probably just a piece of journalistic propaganda. A headline that wouldn’t seem out of place plastered across tabloid newspapers even today.

It is a sentiment that appears elsewhere in folklore, and it has precedence in a tale from sixteenth century Germany, two hundred years before Marie-Antoinette was born, where a noblewoman wonders why the hungry don’t eat Krosem, a type of sweet bread. It would seem that the stories of rich aristocrats being oblivious to their own life of privilege are widespread.

Marie-Antoinette with the Rose, 1783, Elisabeth Vigee Le Brun, Oil on Canvas, Palace of Versailles

One of the first times the phrase is seen in print is in a book Confession, written around 1767 by Jean-Jacque Rousseau where he attributes it to ‘a great princess’. Marie Antoinette was indeed a princess but as she was born in 1755 she was only twelve years old at the time so it is unlikely that the words can be attributed to her. However Rousseau’s writing inspired the revolutionaries, and consequently it is easy to see how they picked up on this quote and used it to spread opposition to the monarchy.

And brioche, being a type of enriched bread isn’t even cake. But we will return to Marie Antoinette and the question of cake later.

About 15 years ago I visited a fabulous exhibition at the Barbican in London called Future Beauty, the first exhibition of its kind in Europe to look at modern Japanese fashion. In the late twentieth century Japanese designers redefined fashion, challenging accepted notions of beauty and using clothes as an art form. Garments were folded, ripped, draped and sculpted into amazing silhouettes that broke with the conventional systems of dressmaking whereby three dimensional garments are made from flat cloth by using curved seams and darts. There were galleries full of the most amazing garments but the one ensemble that caught my eye and to which I kept returning was not sculpted from cloth but from yarn.

The outfit was designed by Tao Kurihara for Commes des Garcon and consisted of refashioned traditional undergarments made into feminine knitted outerwear. The resulting knitted wool garments were constructed with an abundance of twists, bobbles and cables and adorned with ribbons and lace. It was a fun, humorous and very pretty outfit, and whilst I might not want the knitted shorts I could imagine someone actually wearing the bodice which is more than can be said for many of the outrageous, yet wonderful designs in the exhibition. And for no discernible reason other than possibly the outrageous frivolity, the outfit made me think of Marie-Antoinette.

By the time I was on the train home I knew that I wanted to knit my own version of the bodice, and this would be the next in my series of bodices for famous women. Sometimes the inspiration came from the women themselves, sometimes from a particular technique, but in this case I just wanted to knit a woolly vest for Marie-Antoinette.

With no pattern to follow and no planning whatsoever I grabbed some cream wool from my stash and started by casting on a lot of stitches and knitting several rows of cables. It was soon apparent that what I was knitting was going to be huge, so I decreased into the cables creating a frilled edge and a conveniently nipped in waist. And so I continued making it up as I went along, casting off and dividing the stitches to create a neckline and straps. I crocheted around the edges, added a ribbon tie and placed it on a tailors dummy while I contemplated how I would decorate it further. It occurred to me that it would be a fun take on the supposed ‘Let them eat cake’ phrase to decorate my bodice with knitted cupcakes. I knitted a selection of ‘cakes’ and arranged them artfully around the neckline of the bodice but it just didn’t work.

No matter how much I moved them around into different configurations they just looked like big round pink breasts with red cherry nipples. Whilst I am all for having humour in my work this was a step too far even for me. Eventually I relented and realised that I wouldn’t be able to tastefully incorporate the cakes into the finished design and instead I crocheted numerous flowers in sugary pinks, which I embellished with beads and lace, and these were used to adorn the neckline of the bodice. Marie-Antoinette was known to love her garden in Versailles, so the flowers felt appropriate, and all the frills and frippery were in keeping with the fashions of the time.

I admit that I loved the finished bodice and if I have one regret it is that I didn’t write down the pattern as I went along. Over the years since I made it I have often given talks about the bodices and the women who inspired them, aptly named The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, and there was always at least one member of the audience who asked if I had the pattern that I could share. There was also always at least one member of the audience who fell asleep... But you win some, you lose some.

Although I was pleased with the resulting bodice I was still keen to somehow use the knitted cakes in my finished design but really couldn’t see how. A couple of friends suggested making a hat, but it was only then that the idea popped into my head that maybe I should make not a hat, but a wig in the style of the huge, elaborate, gravity defying hairstyles of the era of Marie-Antoinette.

Marie-Antoinette, artist unknown (18th century French School), Musee Antoine Lecuyer

Her stylist who was apparently called Leonard, would spend hours coiffuring her hair into a style called a ‘pouf’, teasing it into lofty sculptures supported by wire, wool and stuffed pads, adorning it with jewels and plumes of feathers and fixing it into place with a product called pomatum, obviously a lot stronger stuff than a can of Elnette.

I had no idea how I would achieve the construction but I did know it would take a lot of cakes and so I enlisted the help of followers of my blog at the time. I provided a basic pattern for a knitted cake and asked people to send me a cake, in return for which they would be entered into a draw for some prizes, plus I offered to make a donation to a breast cancer charity for each cake received. I was overwhelmed by the response and eventually received over ninety cakes of all sorts of types, shapes and sizes ranging from doughnuts to jam tarts. It was then that I had to decide how to put them all together.

My initial thought was to make a crochet cap and construct the wig around it but it soon became apparent I would need a firmer base to hold everything in place and so I made a solid papier mâché helmet. Onto this I created height with a custom made cushion pad, much the same as would be used in the original hairstyles and then one by one I stitched the cupcakes into place building the hairstyle. I finished the whole thing with some more crochet flowers, beads and feathers plus a bird and a couple of mice for good measure.

It became a great attraction when I gave my talks and if I couldn’t find a volunteer in the audience I was always prepared to put it on. Anything for a laugh!

My days of giving talks are long gone and although I was once approached by someone who wanted to use the wig for a fashion shoot (apparently for Vogue) it never actually happened and sadly the wig now resides in a plastic bag in my loft… along with all five bodices and their tailors dummies. Any ideas of what to do with them gratefully received.

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Cleopatra

Anne Boleyn

Persephone