![]() ![]() The same people who were allegedly dancing to the theme of execution happened to be wearing short hair. It was simple to misattribute the coiffure. Those who danced and wore the coiffure à la victime were the antithesis of radical revolution, which fought to end feudalism and institute a liberal democracy. In 1925 historian Louis Madelin wrote of the heartless parties of greedy capitalists. Once the coiffure à la Titus had become a universal style, it was easy for propagandists to sensationalize - or falsify - its meaning. The heads the Republicans wanted rolling were now wearing the style. The smart set had co-opted the revolutionary look. Noble-born Thérèsa Cabarrus, known as the reine de la mode (queen of fashion), popularized the look described as “short and frizzed all round her head, in the fashion then called à la Titus.” In 1802 the Journal de Paris reported that more than half of fashionable and wealthy women had either cut their hair or wore a wig à la Titus. Immediately these women were called “disfigured” and “unsexed,” but the style still went mainstream. ![]() “What had been intended as a signifier of male devotion to a Republican France was fundamentally transformed by the women who took part in the style,” wrote Jessica Larson in her paper Usurping Masculinity: The Gender Dynamics of the Coiffure à la Titus in Revolutionary France (2003). The style became known as the coiffure à la Titus.Ī few years later, women adopted the style, shearing their hair into messy spikes. In the early 1790s, Republican men cropped their hair short to imitate the style of Roman emperor busts, a celebration of democratic antiquity. (Pierre de la Mesangere/Getty Images)Īnd in a historical irony, the severe coiffure à la victime hairstyle probably originated among the revolutionaries themselves, then evolved as a general fashion trend, and finally, became a symbol of ruling-class decadence. Women getting their hair done, titus-style. ![]() The real bals à la victime probably functioned more as elaborate support groups than the Eyes Wide Shut soirées of popular imagination. “The victims’ ball stood for the apathy of fashionable Parisians in the face of a bad republican government,” wrote history professor Ronald Schechter. In fact, the morbid events became a sort of urban legend, after-the-fact totems of the aristocracy. Under intense scrutiny, any parties the elite had during the revolution were widely criticized and propagandized for the revolutionary agenda.ĭespite many historical accounts of the bals à la victime, few are firsthand. “She dances to avenge, she dances to forget! Between her bloody past and her dark future, she dances! Scarcely saved from the guillotine, she dances…France, still bloodied and all ruined, turns and pirouettes and spins about in an immense and mad farandole.” “France is dancing,” wrote 19th century historians and brothers Edmond and Jules Goncourt. In the 1830s, French historian Théophile Lavallée wrote of the events, “at which one danced in mourning clothes, and to which only individuals whose relatives had perished on the scaffold were admitted.” The fêtes soon became so popular people snuck in with false credentials of dead family members. The French Revolution had taken their family members, and these parties functioned as elaborate wakes - bacchanals complete with gruesome sartorial tributes to the dead.Īt bals à la victime (victims’ balls), the sons and daughters of executed French aristocrats danced in bizarre revelry. Some even wore red scarves around their neck, a gory symbol of the fatal slice.Īs the men bowed to their dance partners, they snapped their heads down sharply - mimicking decapitated heads dropping into a basket. It was the style, a nod to victims of the French guillotine whose hair was shorn before execution. They sang.īoth men and women had chopped their hair close to the nape of the neck. ![]() They ate sherbet and drank punch between waltzes. Pierre-Narcisse Guérin’s Portrait of a Young Girl (1812). ![]()
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