the French government policy from the mid-17th century onwards of promoting and exporting luxury fashion, using expensive materials such as silk, lace, and gold and silver thread. Attempts by other European governments to fight French economic dominance of the fashion industry had the effect of spreading fashion in the French style. For instance, the Austrian empress Maria Theresa considered imposing a sumptuary tax to prevent expenditure on French luxury fashions, but was persuaded to establish a home-grown fashion industry on the French model. Although the rich usually led fashion, the middle classes and even peasants copied the trends among the wealthier classes. By 1800, dress styles were similar among many Western Europeans; local variation became first a sign of provincial culture and later a mark of the conservative peasant. Thus the spread of French fashions increased the contrast between the fashionable clothes of the wealthier classes and folk costumes, which were increasingly perceived as rustic, not fit for polite society. This point is illustrated by the first Oktoberfest, held in 1810 to celebrate the wedding of Crown Prince Ludwig of Bavaria (later King Ludwig I) to Therese of Saxe-Hildburghausen; the citizens of Munich were invited to the festivities but were supplied with French clothes, since their folk costumes were not considered suitable for public occasions. Development of the dirndl as folk costume (19th century) As antithesis to the dominance of French fashion, in the early 19th century a movement to study and preserve the traditional costumes of the rural populations developed in many European countries. Examples of this movement outside the German-language sphere include the Highland romantic revival in Scotland, the Danish folklore movement and the Bunad movement in Norway. In German-speaking countries, the movement was known as the (Tracht movement), and resulted in initiatives to study and promote folk costumes, including the dirndl. The folk costume movement is one aspect of national romanticism, and part of the more widespread Romantic movement of the early 19th century. Art historian Gabriele Crepaldi points out the links between the ideological and political dimensions of the Romantic movement: As Crepaldi observes, the Romantics promoted emotion against the rationalism of the Enlightenment, individual freedom against academic dictates and national against global culture. In Germany, Austria and Switzerland, the Enlightenment was especially associated with France, which had sent its armies across Europe in the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars (1792–1815). In response to the humiliations of