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Updated: June 3, 2025
Madame Tallien alone possessed thirty of these wigs, each of which was valued at that time at one hundred dollars, that is to say, some two hundred dollars of modern money. None of our modern élégantes would ever think of buying six thousand dollars' worth of false hair.
I understand that the summer lounge of the modern elegantes has, of late years, been from the corner of the Rue Grange Bateliere to that of the Rue Mont-Blanc, where the ladies took their seats. This attracting the muscadins in great numbers, not long since obtained for that part of the Boulevard the appellation of Petit Coblentz.
Martin to the Theatre Favart, was the rendezvous of the elegantes, who, on Sundays and Thursdays, used to parade there slowly, backward and forward, in their carriages, as our belles do in Hyde Park; with this difference, that, if their admirers did not accompany them, they generally followed them to interchange significant glances, or indulge in amorous parley.
Among the first in the orchestra stalls were Beauchamp and Debray, whose attention was divided between the stage and the arrivals of splendidly attired elégantes in the different loges, during the overture. All the élite of Paris seemed on the qui vive. "It will be a splendid house," observed Debray.
Here, indeed, you must neither look for elegantes, nor muscadins; but you may view belles, less gifted by Fortune, indulging in innocent recreation; and for a while dispelling their cares, by dancing to the exhilarating music of an orchestra not ill composed. Here, the grisette banishes the ennui of six days' application to the labours of her industry, by footing it away on Sunday.
These imputations and grievances of the Jacobins are not altogether without foundation. People in general are strongly impressed with an idea that the Assembly are veering towards royalism; and it is equally true, that the speeches of Tallien and Freron are occasionally heard and applauded by fair elegantes, who, two years ago, would have recoiled at the name of either.
He went with his uncle to the Broadway establishment, heard the duties which would be demanded from him, the salary which would be given, saw the grace with which the élégants behind the counter displayed their silks, and satins, and velvets, to the élégantes before the counter, and the decision with which they promulgated the decrees of fashion; and with that just sense of his own powers, which is the accompaniment of true genius, he decided at once that there lay his vocation.
These people now recommend fashions by saying one thing is invented by Tallien's wife, and another by Merlin de Thionville, or some other Deputy's mistress; and the genius of these elegantes has contrived, by a mode of dressing the hair which lengthens the neck, and by robes with an inch of waist, to give their countrywomen an appearance not much unlike that of a Bar Gander.
It was not the leaders of society whom they envied; they read of Court balls, and garden parties, of preparations for Ascot and Henley with a serene detachment, just as they read with indifference in the fashion page of a daily newspaper that "Square watches are the vogue this season, and our elegantes are ordering several specimens of this dainty bauble to match the prevailing colours of their costumes," the while they suffered real pangs at the sight of an "alarming sacrifice" at twenty-nine and six.
No sooner was France proclaimed a republic, than the annals of republican antiquity were ransacked for models of female attire: the Roman tunic and Greek cothurnus soon adorned the shoulders of the Parisian elegantes; and every antique statue or picture, relating to those periods of history, was, in some shape or another, rendered tributary to the ornament of their person.
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