Early Years
Bertin came from a family of small means, her mother was a sick nurse. Rose and her brother Jean-Laurent received a modest education but a superior sense of ambition. Rose moved to Paris and became apprenticed to a milliner, Mademoiselle Pagelle, eventually becoming her partner. Rose Bertin’s early success can be attributed to her good relations with the Princesse de Conti, the Duchesse de Chartres and the Princesse de Lamballe, who would one day arrange her fateful meeting with Marie Antoinette.
Rose Bertin opened her own clothing shop, Le Grand Mogol, on the Rue Saint-Honoré in 1770 and quickly found customers among influential noble ladies at Versailles, many of whom followed her from Mademoiselle Pagelle’s, including many ladies-in-waiting to the new Dauphine, Marie Antoinette.
Read more about this topic: Rose Bertin
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or years:
“To be candid, in Middlemarch phraseology, meant, to use an early opportunity of letting your friends know that you did not take a cheerful view of their capacity, their conduct, or their position; and a robust candour never waited to be asked for its opinion.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“In most nineteenth-century cities, both large and small, more than 50 percent—and often up to 75 percent—of the residents in any given year were no longer there ten years later. People born in the twentieth century are much more likely to live near their birthplace than were people born in the nineteenth century.”
—Stephanie Coontz (20th century)