Incroyables and Merveilleuses

About

Les Incroyables (the Unbelievables, men) and Les Merveilleuses (the Marvellous, women) were a brief but famous Parisian fashion subculture of the Directoire period (roughly 1795 to 1799), in the immediate aftermath of the Reign of Terror, when surviving aristocratic and bourgeois youth threw themselves into a deliberate, almost manic visual exuberance. Incroyables wore enormous cravats wrapped to the chin, oversized double-breasted coats with ridiculously wide lapels, exaggerated bicorne hats, knee breeches, hessian boots with tassels, monocles, and powdered hair tied back. Merveilleuses wore high-waisted neoclassical chemise gowns of sheer muslin (sometimes daringly worn over flesh-coloured tights or even dampened to cling), Greek-revival sandals, turbans and bandeaux, and enormous silk shawls. Both groups affected a deliberate speech impediment (avoiding the rolled R, possibly to mock revolutionary Republican speech). The look has been continually revived — through Empire-line Regency dressing, through 18th-century-coded couture (Galliano, Vivienne Westwood, Christian Lacroix), and through any moment of historical-drag fashion exuberance.

Not Regency — Incroyables and Merveilleuses are the specific late-1790s Directoire French fashion-victim subculture, two decades earlier than English Regency proper, with much more exaggerated and politically-loaded styling.

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