Bridgerton: Why Modiste’s Madame Delacroix Fakes Her French Accent

In Bridgerton, Madame Genevieve Delacroix, owner and primary seamstress of Modiste, fakes a French accent. Madame Delacroix’s dressmaking boutique, Modiste, is the hottest spot in town to buy luxurious ball gowns during the social season. The most privileged debutantes go to Madame Delacroix (Kathryn Drysdale) and ask her to make fetching gowns that attract the eyes of every eligible suitor, but Modiste’s customers are also drawn in by Delacroix’s French accent, which is a symbol of exoticism that plays right into the superficiality of London’s high society.

In Bridgerton’s Recency Era London, appearances are everything. Delacroix knows this and takes advantage of it in more than one way. First, Delacroix is a dressmaker, and the very nature of her business relies on customers’ desire to appear beautiful and wealthy. The finest dresses from the finest dress shop are a symbol of wealth and status, which in turn directly impacts a young woman’s ability to find a husband. And because of this fixation on appearances, Madame Delacroix’s customers are particularly susceptible to her deception; Madame Delacroix always fakes a French accent in front of her customers.

Madame Delacroix’s fake French accent takes advantage of the superficiality in London’s high society. The Bridgertons, Featheringtons, and Cowpers never bother to ask Madame Delacroix where she’s from because they don’t care. Madame Delacroix sounds French, and therefore more prestigious, and that’s all that matters. Never mind the fact that Madame Delacroix is an extremely talented seamstress or that she’s a skilled businesswoman and entrepreneur – and even a bit savvy in her use of a French accent. Genevieve Delacroix is an unmarried commoner doing what’s necessary to support herself and fulfill her own ambitions. Whether or not her deception is morally wrong, Madame Delacroix can hardly be blamed for doing it. But when Miss Marina Thompson shows up at Modiste to be fitted for new dresses, she sees through Madame Delacroix’s lie.

When Madame Delacroix tells Lady Featherington that she won’t be able to make more dresses for the family until they pay off their debt to her, Marina addresses Madame Delacroix in French. Marina tells Delacroix that she knows her accent is fake and then Marina blackmails Delacroix into making more dresses for a family that already owes Modiste what one can only imagine to be a large sum of money. But the profit loss from the Featheringtons pales in comparison to the money Delacroix would lose if she were exposed as a fraud. Lady Whistledown would likely sniff out the scandal and make sure it blew up into a huge scandal, possibly shutting down Modiste permanently and making it difficult, if not impossible, for Madame Delacroix to find work ever again.

If Madame Delacroix’s secret got out, the whole town would turn on her immediately – and it wouldn’t be because they thought her accent offensive or even that she lied, and it wouldn’t matter that Madame Delacroix’s dresses were still the most beautiful and well-made dresses in town. Everyone in Bridgertonwould realize that Madame Delacroix’s status in society was much lower than they were led to believe and buying dresses from an English commoner isn’t nearly as desirable or “high-class” as buying dresses from an alluring French designer. In a society fixated on keeping up appearances, Modiste’s dressmaking business profits on vanity and Madame Delacroix relies on that same vanity to keep her customers coming back.

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