“While many European monarchies swathed themselves in luxury, it was the royal courts of France that set the standard for lavish living. In the 17th century Henri IV's second wife, Marie de Médicis, wore for the baptism of one of her children a gown embroidered with 32,000 pearls and 3,000 diamonds. Louis XVI's wife, Marie-Antoinette, overran her astronomical annual clothing budget by buying gowns encrusted with sapphires, diamonds, silver and gold. In ten years Napoleon's wife, the Empress Josephine, spent on clothes half of the £7.5 million France earned selling the 500-million-acre Louisiana territory to the United States. ”
