How a Squished Flea Became the Hottest Color in France and Beyond

If you’ve read many books set in the Georgian and Regency eras (circa 1750-1815), you've undoubtedly come across a heroine wearing a puce-colored gown.

This ugly-sounding word has an uglier meaning in French: flea. That's right. Those nasty little biting insects became a French fashion trend. Which is not so surprising since fleas affected the high-born, low-born and everyone in between because flea bombs hadn't been invented and didn't arrive on the since until around 1939. But I digress.

In spite of the hideous inspiration, the color is quite pretty falling somewhere between brownish purple and mauve, depending on who you ask. So how did a pretty, rich color get such an ugly name?

If it is to be believed, it's one of the most delightfully bizarre origin stories in fashion history. And yes, it involves Marie Antoinette, a dress, and a flea.

The tale goes like this: one day in the late 1770s, the queen swept into a room wearing a new gown in a murky purplish‑brown tone. When Louis XVI was asked what he thought of it, he reportedly shrugged and said, “C’est puce.” Translation: It’s flea‑colored. Romantic, right?

But because this was Versailles, where even offhand royal comments could spark a trend, the court immediately embraced the shade. Suddenly everyone wanted to dress like a very fashionable parasite.

Dyers scrambled to keep up, producing variations with wonderfully dramatic names like flea belly, flea thigh, and old flea. Parisian shoppers loved it too — puce was practical, chic, and conveniently good at hiding stains.

Marie Antoinette herself was no stranger to setting trends, whether she was towering over the court in elaborate hairstyles or playing shepherdess in her faux‑rustic village at the Petit Trianon. Her flair for spectacle made puce the “it” color of 1775… at least for a few months. Fashion moved quickly, even then.

for what puce actually looks like? That depends on who you ask. Pantone calls it a purplish brown. Some historians insist it leans mauve. Others swear it’s closer to dried blood (which, to be fair, is very on‑brand for a flea).

No matter where it lands on the spectrum, puce will always be remembered as the color born from a queen, a quip, and one very unlucky insect.

Because of puce's purplish color, it made a perfect color for my heroine, Ravenna to wear as she transitions out of widowhood in Widow's Peak--the final book in the Widow's and Shadows series.

In those days, mourning was adhered to with a prescribed set of etiquette "rules," which became stricter in the Victorian Era. This was especially true of the upper class women who could afford the clothes, stationary, and other mourning items. Basically, wives would observe mourning by wearing black for a year and then as she transitioned out of widowhood, she would move into shades of purple and gray. Which makes puce a perfect color for a widow coming out of her black widow's weeds as she comes out of mourning.