Minneapolis Institute of Art

Magasin des Modes Nouvelles, Quatrième Année, Vingt-neuvième Cahier, 21 Septembre 1789

Engraver: A.B. Duhamel; after Jean-Florentine Defraine; Author: Jean-Antoine Lebrun-Tossa; Publisher: François Buisson

Date

September 21, 1789

Medium

Hand-colored engraving, letterpress

Department

European Art

Institution

Minneapolis Institute of Art

The first of these magazines to illustrate fashionable responses to the events of July 14, 1789—the storming of the Bastille—features two women, subtly registering the ingenuity, speed, and flexibility of the marchandes des modes. Red, white, and blue colors predominate, and both women, we are told, wear the “cockade of the Nation”: large at this early date, they would grow smaller over time. The woman on the right wears a symbolically coded bonnet, bearing overlapping images of a cross, sword, and spade representing a harmonious merging of the three estates (clergy, nobility, and commoners). The accompanying text declares: “These distinctions are no longer wanted in France. There are none but citizens now.” Europe

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