Marie's hair color


There is one section, where MA "crowns" the soldiers from the American Revolution, and her hair has an unexpected pink cast to it. It stays for a few scenes, then you never see it again. Does anyone know why this was put in? Did it have something to do with her "performance" in her private theatre? Thanks!

reply

[deleted]

Fashionable Eighteenth Century ladies often wore shaded wigs. Pastel pink, powder blue, light green, soft lilac, silver white. It wasn't "unexpected" in the least.










Snobbery is a form of romanticism, the chastity of the perfectionist

reply

I believe her natural hair color was a pale gold.

At one point is was fashionable for the court to wear silk woven in this same shade, in order to flatter her.

reply

Yes, it was called "Queen's Hair" (Cheveux a la Reine), and thanks for the answers. I had forgotten that the powders were used in different colors on the hair.

reply

I've never seen colored powdered wigs in most paintings of 18th century women. From the majority of the paintings, it was white or silver powder that was the most commonly used and most fashionable. Young people in the nobility having white or silver streaked hair - which is something that occurs when you're very old - was a sign that you were wise and noble. It distinguished the nobility from the commoners. Commoners couldn't afford to wear wigs and powder for their hair and they were all natural all the time.

I wish this movie had shown Marie Antoinette at 37 when she was at the Conciergerie prison in Paris awaiting her execution. She had natural white hair then, not powder, because she had aged prematurely due to all the stress and anguish she suffered during the Revolution when all her loved ones were taken from her. That would have been a much more deeper angle to show contrast from having fake white hair to real white hair.

reply

http://www.google.dk/imgres?um=1&hl=da&safe=off&sa=N&biw=1366&bih=611&tbm=isch&tbnid=mm0o9kFlQSez2M:&imgrefurl=http://marie-antoinettequeenoffrance.blogspot.com/2011/02/soundtrack-downton-abbey-items-of.html&docid=ODvS_CU-FHXajM&imgurl=http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_DzskcQgu3L4/TUjhP-YA9LI/AAAAAAAADN4/1bC3hvTFy9Y/s1600/yermolai-kamezhenkov-portrait-of-a-young-lady-e-n-likhachyova-1790.jpg&w=1278&h=1600&ei=oM4CUNusIsyKswbW_6zLBg&zoom=1&iact=hc&vpx=454&vpy=286&dur=1135&hovh=251&hovw=201&tx=139&ty=179&sig=113331439862422884350&page=1&tbnh=132&tbnw=89&start=0&ndsp=25&ved=1t:429,r:19,s:0,i:129

This portrait is from 1790.

About Maries hair colour, most people assume that it was golden or blond. In fact it was actually strawberry blond when she was young and almost auburn when she was older. Fun fact: When Thomas Jefferson visited Versailles in 1785, he noted that the queen wore a special red powder. In fact, that wasn't the case, her real hair colour just showed through the layer of white powder she wore.

reply