Pompadour

   Pompadour is a style of dressing the hair in which the hair is brushed straight up from the forehead and pulled back over a pad. Whence cometh this name? Anyone familiar with French history would associate this hair style with Madame de Pompadour.

   Jeanne Antoinette Poisson (1721-1764), a woman from ordinary circumstances, became probably history's most famous mistress or concubine. She married a nobleman, Charles Guillaume d'Etoiles, and soon set her cap, so to speak, for King Louis XV, whom she had met at a masked ball. The king quickly became completely enamored of her and invited her to become his mistress and to live at Versailles. She immediately divorced her husband and cheerfully accepted the offer.

   This new mistress was given the title of Marquise de Pompadour and the king's maitresse en titre, or official mistress. But she was better known as Madame de Pompadour. She exercised a profound influence over the king for two decades. In fact, she became politically indispensable. When Pompadour fell out of favor with the king as a mistress (Madame du Barry, the daughter of a dressmaker, replaced her), she shrewdly maintained her political importance. But Pompadour was not in good health. She was tubercular and anemic and had suffered several miscarriages. She died at age forty-three.

   Though Pompadour guided the destiny of France for two decades and had a lasting influence on French culture, she now is remembered only as the king's mistress and for the eponymous coiffure she introduced.