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The Waterloo brand: Sideways hat, a big capital ‘N’, plus bees.

By CLAIRE WRATHALL [Christie’s Daily] — When Andrew Roberts’ masterly biography Napoleon the Great was published last autumn, Penguin’s art editor, Isabelle de Cat, intentionally eschewed portraits and images of battle scenes for its cover, opting instead for a large ‘N’ surrounded by an orderly swarm of golden bees. She was taking, she said at the time, ‘a symbolic approach, with the cover creating a sort of “brand” for Napoleon.’

bicorne1Not that she needed to, for Napoleon himself had been wise to the power of brands and the need for logos, so to speak. Take the glass bottle found in a carriage of Napoleon’s that Christie’s is selling on 9 July (see below). There at the base of its neck is, not a bee, but a letter N in bold relief, surrounded by laurels and topped with an imperial crown.

As the great authority on branding Wally Olins put it in his book On Brand, ‘It was the French who really started national branding in 1789 after the Revolution. The tricolour replaced the Fleur de Lys, the Marseillaise beaome the new anthem, traditional weights and measures were replaced by the metric system, a new calendar was introduced. God was replaced by the Supreme Being. France was quite consciously and overtly rebranded, the first nation to enter on so self-aware a course.’ Napoleon’s challenge, on crowning himself emperor, was therefore, writes Olins, ‘quite consciously and overtly [to] rebrand’ not just France but Europe, an achievement ‘the whole [continent] was profoundly influenced by.’

Of course initials and gilded bees have no place in war. When it came to the battlefield, Napoleon’s personal style signifier, so to speak, was his hat: a black felt bicorne, made by Poupart & Cie, which had premises in what is now the Palais-Royal in Paris. The convention of the time was to wear such hats with their corners pointing forward and back. In order to ensure he was instantly identifiable on the battlefield, Napoleon wore his sideways.


Continued on Christie’s Daily | More Chronicle & Notices.

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