Captivating Metals

Abstract

According to Valerie Steele (1988: 24), Louis XIV ‘desired the precise regulation of clothing according to minute distinctions of rank’, a fact which placed severe restrictions on sartorial choice and linked dress unambiguously to power. In particular the right to employ ‘woven material and trimmings of gold and silver’ was reserved to himself, the princes of his family and those subjects on whom he conferred the privilege. At his marriage to the Infanta Maria Theresa of Spain in 1660, the Spanish grandees dressed in sombre black velvet were ‘symbolically opposed [by] the French nobility in the baroque splendour of beautiful lace and gold and silver braid’ (ibid.: 23). Many years later, Louis XIV let it be known that he wished the court to be especially magnificent for the marriage of his grandson. Although he had dressed simply for some time, he planned on this occasion to don ‘the most superb raiment’. ‘This was sufficient to launch a mad rush to attain the height of richness and invention,’ Steele notes. According to Saint-Simon, ‘there was barely enough gold and silver’ (ibid.: 23).