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| 1804-5. France went by the French Republican Calendar from 1793 to 1805; these first plates are dated "year 13". |
Napoléon proclaimed himself emperor in May of 1804, and for the first time in fifteen years, since the commencement of the French Revolution, France had a royal - or, rather, imperial - court. The luxury demanded by and lavishly displayed at the Tuileries, Fontainebleau, Compiègne, St. Cloud exceeded even that of the greatest days of the ancien régime, and Paris was once again fully the cynosure of the fashionable world; in form and embellishment the court dress of the other European kingdoms slavishly followed the French lead. Ten years later, after the fall of Napoléon and the return of the Bourbons - in the prodigious shape of Louis XVIII - the silhouette of regulation dress at the once again merely royal court differed little. But in general, the trimmings became heavier and less graceful, there was something of a nostalgic and often awkward layering on of pre-Revolution excess, and much of the refinement and elegance of the glamorous Empire was lost.
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| 1804-5. |
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| 1804-5. Men's court dress differed very little from that of the last days of the ancien régime. |
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| 1814. The white lilies in the coiffure are a clear indication that the Bourbons have returned to power. |
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| 1819. |
