From the Tuileries to Toronto: A Late 18th Century French Court Dress in the Royal Ontario Museum

One of the treasures of the ROM’s Textiles and Costume collection is a dress and matching underskirt attributed to Marie-Jeanne “Rose” Bertin, marchande de modes to Marie-Antoinette and other illustrious ladies of the court of Louis XVI. During her fellowship, Dr. Chrisman-Campbell studied the dress and its matching underskirt .Her research involved a complete survey of the dress, including its social context, its construction and embroidery, the alterations made to it, its provenance, and its more recent history. Her research on this dress formed part of her doctoral dissertation, a biography of Bertin entitled: “Minister of Fashion: Marie-Jean ‘Rose’ Bertin, 1747-1813.”