The Queen and Her ‘Minister of Fashion’
This article explores the economic, cultural and political role of credit networks in the Ancien Regime through a study of the career of the fashion merchant Rose Bertin. It examines three aspects of the practices inherent to Rose Bertin’s credit networks: her implication in commercial credit networks, her manipulation of her reputation as a particular form of credit, and the way her enemies underlined her credit relations with Marie-Antoinette to discredit the political economy of the sex.