`All our automatic liberal assumptions about parliamentary democracy and freedom and human rights have their germ in the 18th century'
Karl Lagerfeld ties his powder-grey ponytail with a silk ribbon and flutters a fan in front of his eyes. The top designer at Chanel says he would give anything to have lived in the 18th century. His fellow couturiers share his nostalgia. In the collections of Vivienne Westwood, John Galliano, Alexander McQueen and Christian Lacroix, brocade, whale-bone corseted busts and petticoated hoop skirts have been a recurring theme for the past decade.
Around the world, from the nursery schools of Tokyo to the gay and lesbian studies departments of American universities, from the auction houses of France to the Swiss and German chateaux-turned-tourist-attractions where Voltaire took refuge from the monarchs he offended, the 18th century is in fashion. The revival is quietly working its way into the clothes we wear, the furniture we buy, the books we read, the films we watch and the exhibitions we go to.
Films set in the 18th century, including Liaisons Dangereuses and Ridicule have found a wide cinema audience in recent years. The German writer Patrick Suskind's 18th century saga, Perfume, was an international best-seller. Philippe Sollers in France and Peter Ackroyd, Stella Tillyard and Amanda Foreman in Britain have made a specialty of colourful 18th-century biographies. The BBC's Aristocrats series about the Lennox sisters, daughters to the Duke of Redmond in the 18th century, was as popular as the Tillyard book upon which it was based.
In France as in Ireland, the simple, elegant lines of 18th-century furniture have always been regarded as the epitome of good taste. In both countries - and throughout Europe - there is a booming market in 18th-century reproductions, as well as originals. Marie-Claire Maison now exhorts readers to follow leading French decorators such as Jacques Garcia and Frederic Mchiche in blending 18th-century furniture with modern pieces.
Why, you may wonder, on the eve of the new millennium, should we indulge in a throwback to three centuries ago? The glamorous life of the aristocrats - the jet-set of their age - is certainly a magnet. "Anyone who has not lived before [the French revolution in] 1789 does not know what it is to enjoy life," Talleyrand wrote. Perhaps we sense a parallel between the privileged of that time and ourselves - prosperous and pleasure-seeking, with a safe distance between us and the hungry masses of the developing world. Or are we merely fascinated by the axis between old and new?
"The 18th century is a time which is recognisably modern, with banks and stock exchanges, hotels and shops," says Andrew Miller, the English writer whose first novel, the story of a medical doctor in the 18th century entitled Ingenious Pain won this year's £100,000 IMPAC award. "On the other hand, it is part of a much older, almost medieval, remote and brutal world, where a nine-year-old girl was hanged in Norwich for stealing a petticoat."
Consider the publicity given to last year's 50th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the workings of the International Court of Justice in the Hague, the high-minded moral rhetoric that surrounded this year's war in Yugoslavia; it's not surprising that we're returning to the origin of these concepts.
"There are political reasons for liking the 18th century," says Prof Nicholas Cronk, a fellow at St Edmond Hall, Oxford and the director of the Voltaire Foundation. "It was the time when modern ideas of humanism and freedom evolved. All our automatic liberal assumptions about parliamentary democracy and freedom and human rights have their germ there."
The philosophes died before the great cataclysm of the French revolution. "Voltaire and Rousseau were made heroes of the revolution," Prof Cronk adds. "When the revolution abolished Christianity and decided to turn the Pantheon into a monument rather than a church, they held big ceremonies to rebury the bones of Voltaire, then Rousseau." The Age of Enlightenment represented by its two best-known, quarrelling thinkers is sometimes blamed for fostering the Terror. "The philosophes brought us to the revolution and the revolutionaries brought us to the terror," says Marc Martinez, a professor of 18th-century theatre at the University of Bordeaux. "It wasn't the fault of the philosophes."