MERVEILLEUSES, ironical name given to the most prominent leaders of female fashion, in the Thermidorian and Directory periods. Parisian ladies’ dress styles during this time, promoted by the journal La magasin des modes, were inspired by both neoclassical simplicity and a snobbish Anglophilism (although the latter characteristic was more marked among the merveilleuses’ male partners, the incroyables).
The so-called antique style favored a simple white tunic of muslin, worn with bare arms, sandals, no stockings, and gold rings on the toes. Madame Récamier, the banker’s wife whose portrait was painted by J.-L. David, wore such white tunics with a thread of gold. This Greek-inspired style also favored a high waist, gathered by a blue or black belt, which served to hold a fan.
The more extravagant dressers, often associated with the nouveaux-riches, earned the title merveilleuses.

Madame Hamelin, wife of a government contractor, was seen in a costume that was topless save for a thin veil. In addition, there was a vogue for chapeaux à  l’anglaise, some of which were decked in flowers, plumes, and ribbons.

This parade of fashion was partly a self-conscious reaction against the puritanical social mores associated with the Terror. At the infamous Bal des Victimes, entrants had to provide the death certificate of a relative killed during the Revolution. Immediately after 9 Thermidor Year II, there was a brief vogue for the wig, a symbol of ancien régime society; and L.-S. Mercier reports a brisk trade in blonde wigs, conducted by ex-nuns.

The most notorious leader of Paris fashion in the later 1790s was Madame Tallien. Formerly Thérèse Cabarrus, daughter of a banker in Spain, she married the conventionnel Tallien in the Year III and gave birth to a daughter named Thermidor. She subsequently became the mistress of the director P. Barras and then the contractor G. Ouvrard, who were financially well capable of indulging her exacting taste in dress and entertainment. Her appetite for extravagant clothes and lavish furnishings was matched only by J. de Beauharnais, of whom Barras cynically remarked that she would have drunk gold out of her lover’s skull.

Quelle: Barry Rothaus/Samuel F. Scott: Historical Dictionary of the French Revolution 1789-1799 Vol. 2. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1985.