When it comes to origin stories, the Champagne coupe's usually begins with human anatomy. The glass is often thought to be modeled on a breast -- but not just any breast: Rumor has it that the shape was inspired by Helen of Troy, or Marie Antoinette, or some even say Madame de Pompadour. (After all, the Greeks did drink out of a breast-shaped cup called a mastos cup, which was complete with an articulated nipple.
 |
| Masto Cup |
It's said that Louis XVI -- grandson of Madame Pompadour's man -- gifted his wife Marie Antoinette a jatte-téton: a breast-shaped cup that was a throwback to the one used by the Greeks. The story goes that he surprised her with a white marble dairy at their summer house, Château de Rambouillet, complete with a 65-piece set of original porcelain dishes to be used for dinner parties. Designed by the storied French porcelain house Sèvres, this set included the cup, which was supposedly modeled after Marie Antoinette's own breast. In order to actually drink from it, one had to remove it from the base and carefully cradle it in both hands.
The “saucer” shaped glass is another Champagne icon associated with a celebrity sex symbol. The Champagne coupe is often claimed to have been modeled on the shape of the breast of a French aristocrat, often cited as Marie Antoinette or Madame de Pompadour.
Madame du Pompadour (1721-1764): This mistress of France’s Louis XV supposedly had the glasses crafted as a special gift for her imperial lover who it was said greatly admired her breasts and longed to be able to drink champagne from them.
Madame du Barry (1743-1793): The same story told about du Pompadour is also told of du Barry, another mistress of France’s Louis XV.
Empress Josephine (1763-1814): This wife of Napoleon had a great fondness for the bubbly (her champagne bills were said to have horrified her husband), so it’s not surprising this legend would attach to her.
Diane de Poitiers (1499-1566): This mistress of Henry II was said to have commissioned a glassblower at their Chateau d’Anet to make them as a present to Henry, who was particularly enamored of her breasts and harbored a fantasy to drink wine from them. In another version of the tale, Henry was the one who came up with this idea, and the mold was solely of her left breast.
Helen of Troy: Helen was said to possess “the face that launched a thousand ships,” a reference to her husband, Menelaus, coming after her and her lover, Paris, with a force of thousands. It is said Paris made wax molds of her breasts, then used those molds as forms for drinking glasses.
Nor is there any proof to back up any of the many variations on the Marie Antoinette tale. The champagne coupe was not modeled after the breasts of Helen of Troy; nor those of Joséphine de Beauharnais, wife of Napoleon; nor those of Diane de Poitiers, mistress of Henri II; nor Madame de Pompadour, chief mistress of Louis XV; nor Madame du Barry, another of Louis XV's mistresses. It is true that Claudia Schiffer loaned a stylized outline of her left breast to a Karl Lagerfeld-designed ceramic coupe for Dom Perignon in 2007 (which, in its design, harkens back to Marie Antoinette's own bol sein), and that our hero Kate Moss did the same for a crystal coupe, but those supermodels were inspired by mythology, tittles of historical apocrypha.
The women the champagne coupe origin stories are ascribed to are themselves tied together with certain common threads. They all were lovers of powerful men, and primarily defined by those associations. Portraits show their breasts as uniformly small, round, and lily-white; their intricate corsetry and aristocratic toilette likely kept their décolletage supple and firm, looking ornamental and smelling sweet. As with most rumors, the speculation about these women's roles as drinking-vessel models (which was rampant—an English-language account of Madame du Barry's journals published in her lifetime mentions that the rumor "profoundly scandalized the palace's residents and regular visitors") wasn't merely innocuous chatter from spiteful ladies-in-waiting and scornful subjects. Rather, it was—and still is—a way to assert that these women of stature never become anything more than their bodies. Whether in a dishy rumor or a revered myth, the story of the breast-based coupe still serves as a way to keep women under glass.
In 2014 to celebrate Kate Moss’s 40th birthday and her 25 years in the fashion business, sculptor Jane McAdam Freud and the London restaurant '34 Restaurant developed a line of limited edition champagne cups designed on Kate's shapes. In the eighteenth century it was Marie Antoinette's breast that inspired the famous cup containing the nectar of French grapes.
Lucky for coupe enthusiasts, the classic breast-shaped glass persists. It’s been making a comeback in the last few years, partially helped by shows like Mad Men.
 |
| Claudia Schiffer in 2007 |
The women the champagne coupe origin stories are ascribed to are themselves tied together with certain common threads. They all were lovers of powerful men, and primarily defined by those associations. Portraits show their breasts as uniformly small, round, and lily-white; their intricate corsetry and aristocratic toilette likely kept their décolletage supple and firm, looking ornamental and smelling sweet. As with most rumors, the speculation about these women's roles as drinking-vessel models (which was rampant—an English-language account of Madame du Barry's journals published in her lifetime mentions that the rumor "profoundly scandalized the palace's residents and regular visitors") wasn't merely innocuous chatter from spiteful ladies-in-waiting and scornful subjects. Rather, it was—and still is—a way to assert that these women of stature never become anything more than their bodies. Whether in a dishy rumor or a revered myth, the story of the breast-based coupe still serves as a way to keep women under glass.
 |
| The 34 Kate Moss Coupe |
In 2014 to celebrate Kate Moss’s 40th birthday and her 25 years in the fashion business, sculptor Jane McAdam Freud and the London restaurant '34 Restaurant developed a line of limited edition champagne cups designed on Kate's shapes. In the eighteenth century it was Marie Antoinette's breast that inspired the famous cup containing the nectar of French grapes.
 |
| Kate Moss Posed For while pregnant. |
Lucky for coupe enthusiasts, the classic breast-shaped glass persists. It’s been making a comeback in the last few years, partially helped by shows like Mad Men.
