A pair of Queen Marie Antoinette’s silk slippers sold at auction in Paris – the day before the anniversary of her death on 18th October 1793.
The fabulous pink and green silk shoes had been given an estimate of around $13,000 but on the day reached more than $60,000 paid by an anonymous bidder. A low estimate when you consider that a pair of the doomed Queen’s white silk mules fetched $57,000 earlier the same year at auction in Toulon.
Known for her lavish spending on clothes and accessories (apparently ordering 90 dresses in one year) nobody can know for sure how many pairs of shoes the French Queen owned. Nicknamed Madame Deficit by unhappy subject’s estimates range from four pairs of shoes a week, 500 – 3000 pairs in her wardrobe at any one time. The Paris auctioned shoes are said to have been given to a man servant as a gift in 1775, the year the portrait above by Jean-Baptiste Gautier Dagoty was painted.
