During a month when New York, London, Paris and Milan host successive fall fashion weeks, my column in this weekend’s Kingston Whig-Standard discusses Queen Marie Antoinette of France’s dressmaker Rose Bertin, the first “celebrity” fashion designer in the late eighteenth century. Today, there are plenty of examples of fashion designers becoming famous because royalty wear their collections but Bertin was the first to publicize that she served the Queen, achieving fame and fortune during the years preceding the French Revolution.

Click here to read “The Trend-Setting ‘Minister of Fashion'” in the Kingston Whig-Standard