Marie Antoinette’s beauty regime

Marie Antoinette’s beauty regime quickly became a source of public fascination. Madame Campan reported, “All wished instantly to have the same dress as the Queen and to wear the feathers and flowers to which her beauty, then in its brilliancy, lent an indescribable charm. The expenditure of the younger ladies was necessarily much increased; mothers and husbands murmured at it, some few giddy women contracted debts; unpleasant domestic scenes occurred… and the general report was — that the Queen would be the ruin of all the French ladies.”¹

Even her mother in Austria commented, “I must mention a subject upon which all the Gazettes enlarge, and that is your dress. They speak of hair-dressing, a coiffure, of thirty-six inches high from the roots of the hair with feathers and ribbons above that again! You know my opinion, to follow fashion in moderation, never to excess. A young and pretty Queen has no need of follies.”² Marie Antoinette responded, “It is true I am rather taken up with dress, but as to feathers, everyone wears them, and it would seem extraordinary if I did not.”³

At the time, it was fashionable to powder the hair and to use pomatum (a scented oil) to fix it first. The powder was blown into the hair, while the receiver’s elaborate court dress was covered with a cape. It was also the custom to wear rouge, which was applied in huge circles in a bold colour. The rouge was meant to distinguish those of rank, and it was forbidden to wear it outside court. The face was also covered with a powder. This was not to everyone’s taste, of course, and Leopold Mozart wrote about the “detestable make-up… unbearable to the eyes of an honest German.”⁴ Even her own brother, Emperor Joseph II, mocked her appearance.

She kept up a skincare routine that included cleansing it with eau cosmetique de pigeon and using eau des charmes, which were drops exuded by grapevines. The eau d’ange purified and whitened her complexion. She also used a Pâte Royale hand cream and pomades with various scents. When she bathed, she used a soap scented with herbs, and she used a powder to keep her teeth white. Her rouge was purchased from Mademoiselle Martin, and she was also sent a rouge pomade to use on her lips, although it is unclear if she used this.⁵ She also had a grand collection of perfumes, which she kept in a grooming cabinet.

By the 1780s, Marie Antoinette began to prefer a simpler lifestyle, and she began to use both the powder in her hair and the rouge on her face sparingly.⁶ As the first grey hairs appeared, so did the first signs of revolution. In 1791, after the Flight to Varennes, Marie Antoinette took off her cap to reveal that her hair had gone completely white. She had a ring made with a lock of hair to be sent to the Princess of Lamballe with the inscription, “blanchis par malheur” (bleached by misfortune).⁷ It had probably been going white for a while, but before then, it was covered with dye or a simple cap.

On 16 October 1793, her white hair was hacked off with scissors and covered with a bonnet. She wore a simple white dress, coincidentally once the colour of mourning for the Queens of France, to her execution.

1. In the Shadow of the Empress by Nancy Goldstone p.329
2. In the Shadow of the Empress by Nancy Goldstone p.329
3. In the Shadow of the Empress by Nancy Goldstone p.329
4. Marie Antoinette by Antonia Fraser p.92
5. A scented palace: the secret history of Marie Antoinette’s perfumer by Elisabeth de Feydeau p.59
6. Marie Antoinette by Antonia Fraser p.266
7. Marie Antoinette by Antonia Fraser p.420