As a fashion trendsetter, Marie Antoinette was used to sticking her neck out. (Sorry ... couldn’t resist.) She helped establish:

•Luxury brands. The Queen made Rose Bertin (a Parisian “stylist” who reworked dress trimmings) a household name, notes historian Caroline Weber.

•Knockoffs. The loose white chemises she took to wearing at the Petit Trianon, her rustic getaway, were made of simple fabrics – gauze, muslin and linen – which were easier to copy than aristocratic velvet, satin and brocade. Like celebrities who wear “the must-have Dior bag that’s on Canal Street a month later, Marie Antoinette helped break down boundaries between fashion for the upper class and the masses,” Weber says.

•Hollywood chic. She mimicked the flirty look of actresses and courtesans, upping their influence over stodgy stylemeisters of the court, notes FIT’s Valerie Steele.

•Man-tailored style. More than a century before Coco Chanel donned pants, Marie Antoinette shocked society by riding horses astride (not sidesaddle), wearing men’s trousers, riding coats with large buttons and lapels and brimmed hats (instead of bonnets), Weber says.

•Short hemlines. Sick of the hoop skirts, trains and unwieldy attire of the French court, the queen donned the robe a la polonaise, with its scandalously short hem that revealed shoes and – heavens! – ankles.

•Big hair. The “pouf” was a beehive and then some – with real hair and extensions teased three feet high and bedecked with feathers, ribbons, even birds’ nests or model ships depicting naval battles. A lucrative feather trade sprang up, notes Antonia Fraser in “Marie Antoinette,” but the Queen’s mother was unimpressed. “A young and pretty Queen,” she wrote, “has no need of these follies.” Mothers.

Source: FortWayne.com