merveilleuse

1. (historical) A fashionable young Frenchwoman of the late 18th-century, characterized by extravagant dress sense and anti-revolutionary ideas.Examples: "There were the mad fashions sported by the extraordinarily (by turns over- and under-) dressed Incroyables and Merveilleuses, the guzzling of champagne, and the ingestion of bountiful meals in smart restaurants (a recent invention)."; "You are the reason I arrived indecently late at Madame de Volanges's and had all the old ladies thinking I was a Merveilleuse."; "The female equivalents were called Merveilleuses and adopted Greek dress and espoused a neo-classical nostalgia."historical