Marie Antoinette: Style Queen

Apparently I'm not the only one with an eye on the monarchy. This Sunday's New York Times Style magazine insert featured Marie Antoinette as a French fashionista. The teen queen had a passion for fashion, and, as Antonia Fraser notes in her book on the style icon, the craze of her courtiers to follow in her oh-so-chic shoes led more than one husband to go bankrupt. Suddenly the look of Marie Antoinette is once again now.

What are we to make of this trend? A woman beheaded as the last Queen of France, during her reign of incredible excess (hers) and incredible hardship of everyone else? Maybe it's fun to popularize that century's real-life Cruella DeVille. After all, would she have been remembered if she hadn't made the notorious remark during the Flour War when people were starving, to "mangent de la brioche" when bread -- the food staple of the French -- cost half of a working person's income?

A little bit of style certainly goes a long way.