merveilleuse

plural merveilleuses · alternative Merveilleuse

1. historicalA female merveilleux.

   The Merveilleuses survived the Incroyables by a couple of years.

   1898, Octave Uzanne, chapter I, in Mary Loyd, transl., Fashion in Paris: The Various Phases of Feminine Taste and Æsthetics from 1797 to 1897, page 19

   1 more example

   The ‘merveilleuse’ of the Directory in France. The ‘merveilleuse’, or ‘ultra-fashionable’, as the writer..rather inadequately translates her title, ‘walked..half naked in the Champs Elysees’.

   1892 October 19, The Daily News, page 5/1

plural Merveilleuses

1. historicalA fashionable young Frenchwoman of the late 18th-century, characterized by extravagant dress sense and anti-revolutionary ideas.

   The female equivalents were called Merveilleuses and adopted Greek dress and espoused a neo-classical nostalgia.

   2006, Andrew Hussey, Paris: The Secret History, Penguin, published 2007, page 270

   2 more examples

   There were the mad fashions sported by the extraordinarily (by turns over- and under-) dressed Incroyables and Merveilleuses, the guzzling of champagne, and the ingestion of bountiful meals in smart restaurants (a recent invention).

   2002, Colin Jones, The Great Nation, Penguin, published 2003, page 542

   You are the reason I arrived indecently late at Madame de Volanges's and had all the old ladies thinking I was a Merveilleuse.

   2007, Helen Constantine, translating Choderlos de Laclos, Dangerous Liaisons (1782), Penguin 2007, p. 111