appropriate for her station as royalty, this courageous woman became a fashion trendsetter as she tried out new styles, colors and fabrics. Marie Antoinette endeavored to use fashion to speak out as an individual, show support for various causes, or to show a political stand. Unfortunately, she had neither the experience nor loyal advisors who could predict the public reaction in France to a simple color or ribbon. After the royal family was imprisoned in 1792, a mob invaded the Tuileries and made straight for the queen's wardrobe to festoon themselves in her rich garments and then rip whatever they didn't take into shreds. As the new wife of the crown prince, her one legitimate function was to produce offspring, but the young heir seemed unable to do his part at the beginning. This is why the new queen focused her creative energy on clothes. She didn't invent fashions; she promoted radical new ones through her public persona, in the modern, celebrity-culture way, and that is perhaps why she fascinates us today, unlike the last century which despised her.