ABSTRACT
This chapter characterises a feminine luxury that was the result of a perpetual interaction between her uniqueness, the norms that depended on her rank and the specific context of increased consumption in Paris at the end of the eighteenth century. Marie-Fortunee deEste (1731-1803), the daughter of Francis III Duke of Modena, came to France in 1759 after her marriage to Louis-Francois-Joseph of Bourbon-Conti, Count of La Marche. When she arrived in France in 1759, Marie-Fortunee d'ste left the dormant Modenese court for a brilliant court and the capital of fashion. The chapter focuses on her ordinary and exceptional consumption and appreciates her lifestyle, her singularity, her personal tastes and her place in Parisian and aristocratic society. It looks at French aristocratic consumption by focusing for the first time on the princes of blood's consumption in the eighteenth century. The luxurious expenditures were an identity element that showed the evolution of woman between the times of the marriage, separation and withdrawal.
