Liberty Equality Fashion: The Women Who Styled the French Revolution

Historian Higonnet (history, Barnard Coll.) breathes new life into the stories of Joséphine Bonaparte, Térézia Tallien, and Juliette Récamier, women known for their transformative sense of style. All three fashion radicals used clothes as a statement to fight for their freedom after being imprisoned and obliged to marry during the French Revolution. Higonnet discusses how political leaders at the time dictated style standards to cement their control over the masses, degrading women, segregating races, and establishing sovereignty over the varying classes. Narrator Elisabeth Lagelee confidently moves through these three revolutionaries’ histories, skillfully communicating their tenacity and passionately recounting their influence on the growing push for women’s rights. Although Higonnet’s debut has quite a few illustrations that one misses in audio, both Lagelee, who delivers the main content with grace and clarity, and Higonnet, who animatedly reads the final, rousing bonus chapter, paint a stunning picture of how the clothes both appeared and felt. The audio reads like sumptuous fiction, and listeners probably won’t feel like anything’s missing.