The Merveilleuses scandalized Paris with dresses and tunics modeled after the ancient Greeks and Romans, cut of light or even transparent linen and gauze. Sometimes so revealing they were termed "woven air", many gowns displayed
cleavage and were too tight to allow pockets. In some caricaturized representations, the gowns were dampened in order to further cling to the figure. To carry even a handkerchief, the ladies had to use small bags known as
reticules. They were fond of wigs, often choosing blonde because the
Paris Commune had banned blonde wigs, but they also wore them in black, blue, and green. Enormous hats, short curls like those on Roman busts, and Greek-style sandals were the rage. The sandals tied above the ankle with crossed ribbons or strings of pearls. Exotic and expensive scents fabricated by perfume houses like
Parfums Lubin were worn both for style and as indicators of social station.
Thérésa Tallien, known as "Our Lady of Thermidor", wore expensive rings on the toes of her bare feet and gold circlets on her legs. The Incroyables wore eccentric outfits: large earrings, green jackets, wide trousers, huge neckties, thick glasses, and hats topped by "dog ears", their hair falling on their ears. Their
musk-based fragrances earned the derogatory nickname
muscadins for them and their immediate predecessors, a more middle-class group of anti-Jacobins. They wore
bicorne hats and carried distinctive knobbled bludgeons or canes, which they referred to as their "executive power." Hair was often shoulder-length, sometimes pulled up in the back with a comb to imitate the hairstyles of the condemned. Some sported large monocles. They frequently affected a
lisp, allegedly to avoid the letter "R" as in
revolution, and sometimes a stooped, hunchbacked posture or slouch, as caricatured in numerous cartoons of the time. In addition to Madame Tallien, famous Merveilleuses included
Mademoiselle Lange,
Juliette Récamier, and two very popular
Créoles: Fortunée Hamelin and
Hortense de Beauharnais. Hortense, a daughter of the
Empress Josephine, married
Louis Bonaparte and became the mother of
Napoleon III. Fortunée was not born rich, but she became famous for her
salons and her string of prominent lovers. Parisian society compared
Germaine de Staël and Mme Raguet to
Minerva and
Juno and named their garments for Roman deities: gowns were styled
Flora or
Diana, and tunics were styled
à la Ceres or Minerva. The leading Incroyable,
Paul François Jean Nicolas, vicomte de Barras, was one of five directors who ran the Republic of France and gave the period its name. He hosted luxurious feasts attended by
royalists, repentant
Jacobins, ladies, and
courtesans. Since divorce was now legal, sexuality was looser than in the past. However, de Barras' reputation for immorality may have been a factor in his later overthrow, a
coup that brought the
French Consulate to power and paved the way for
Napoleon Bonaparte. ==Representation in the arts==