THE EMPRESS EUGENIE: Power and Petticoats with Sylvia Sagona

European nobility sniggered when the future Napoleon III made a love marriage with the stunning Spanish redhead Eugenie de Montijo, who unlike royal princesses, was not prepared to play just a passive role. Napoleon always consulted her on matters of State and rightly or wrongly many of his foreign policy blunders are laid at her feet. But this intriguing so called conservative would champion women’s causes in unusual ways while at the same time becoming the prototype of the image of the chic Parisienne which would spread worldwide through the fashion designs of her couturier, Worth.

Sylvia Sagona is an internationally recognised specialist on 19th century French society. She retired from the French Department at The University of Melbourne to work on historical documentaries for French and Australian television and is currently researching a book on the invention of the restaurant in Paris.

Franz Xaver Winterhalter (1805-1873), The Empress Eugenie (detail), 1894