The Empress Eugenie, a classic beauty by all accounts, insisted on an active role in her husband's government. But in matters of fashion, she preferred to follow someone else's lead, usually the Princess Metternich's. Audacious, distinctively dressed, cultivated, cigar-smoking, the Princess Metternich sponsored both Wagner, and Worth. Everyone who met her found her irresistible "not beautiful but worse," said one man enthralled by her. "A fashionable monkey',' is how she described herself. Whenever Worth set about launching a new style, it was she who took it up and made it all the rage. Together, they finally managed to overthrow the crinoline, or hoop skirt, a style Worth himself had at one time vigorously promoted.