Addressed to a worldly female reader eager to know about all the news of the day, the Mercure galant brings into her domestic sphere a diverse array of information gleaned from a far-flung network of correspondents. My paper will examine the ways in which the popular periodical not only shared descriptions of new and popular accessory styles; but rather, published as a portable pocket book and privileging a rhetoric of the networked, the detail, and the incidental, the Mercure galant also functioned as a sort of accessory itself. I will examine case studies of accessories, particularly wigs, in the Modes rubric, in stories and social accounts, and in the November 1701 Enigme to elaborate a provisional theory of the accessory that can enrich our understanding of the sartorial practices of the Ancien regime and our understanding and appreciation of the special modes, dynamics, and esthetics of the 17th century periodical.