Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun - “Portrait de Marie-Antoinette a` la rose”, on its first ever loan from its usual home at the Petit Trianon, Versailles.
"The V&A’s latest blockbuster fashion exhibition, the hotly-anticipated 'Marie Antoinette Style', feels almost like a seance. It’s got everything you’d expect from a no-holds-barred, couture-filled reassessment of the extravagant French queen – the pomp and circumstance, stunning gowns, shimmering jewels, impossibly elegant furnishings, luminous portraiture, items which have never before left Versailles – but even more remarkably, it manages to conjure her spirit, in all its complexity." - Radhika Seth, Vogue magazine.
And so it was that Madam Arcati and I ventured out on Sunday to see what all the fuss was all about - and I am very glad we did!
True to the preeminent reputation of the V&A, they had truly pulled out all the stops to stage the most comprehensive exhibition on the most divisive of all characters in French history. As the report from Vogue attests, its curator Dr. Sarah Grant has gathered together the most amazing array of sumptuous 18th-century fashions - silks woven to look like deliberate blurs or two-tone sunsets, dresses garlanded with three-dimensional flowers, travelling capes where the hood or sleeves could be removed, one of Marie's teeny-tiny silk shoes (and her equally miniscule choker), robes with enormous pannier-suspended skirts and the most impossibly tiny-waisted bodices - and at its centre, the Queen of Sweden's glittering silver robe de cour/wedding gown, with its eight-foot train, apparently based upon the one worn by Marie Antoinette herself.
[l-r] The robe de cour/wedding gown of Duchess Hedvig Elisabeth Charlotta, Queen of Sweden (1774); Marie Antoinette in a court dress by François Hubert Drouais (1773); Marie Antoinette's shoe; Robe à la française silk dress dating from around 1775.
From the grandest of grand ballgowns, where next but the accessories - the jewellery [and her magnificent jewellery cabinet to store them in was also here], the fans...
[l-r] A meticulous 1960s replica of "the grandest diamond necklace ever commissioned", at the centre of the "Affair of the Diamond Necklace" that led to the scandalisation of the Queen's reputation; the Sutherland diamonds (reputed to contain stones from that necklace); the Anglesey Diamond Negligee Necklace (also reputed to be made from its stones); a whole case of fans from her court.
...and what about the wigs?
[left] A genuine wig design worn by Marie Antoinette ("Trumph of Liberty", to celebrate a French naval victory over the British in the American revolutionary wars); [right] a satirical piss-take of the preposterous and towering wig styles of the day.
Inevitably, of course, all this excess, combined with the poverty of the masses and the rise of both revolutionary dogma and vicious satire [examples of the latter, in all their pornographic "glory", are on display], led to the collapse of this entire deck of glittering cards - despite Marie Antoinette's tentative steps towards embracing the ideas of the Enlightenment (she breastfed her children [and there's an immaculate Sevres cup in the shape of what might well have been her own breast on display!] and promoted that practice; she was also an advocate of smallpox innoculation) and the way she began to "tone-down" her image (albeit in the much-reviled "rural fantasies" she staged at her Petit Trianon retreat [her highly impractical "tools", plus fabrics, furniture and porcelain from that era are also on display]) - and even though the Royals agreed to discard their assumed "divine right of kings" and become a constitutional monarchy, there was little that could abate the bloodlust of the mob...
...and yes, there is indeed an actual guillotine blade, together with Marie Antoinette's prison smock, her last written words in her prayer-book and even death masks all on display in their own room.
The rest of the exhibition focuses on Marie Antoinette's enduring legacy (in fashion, specifically) - a "cult" that was promoted by Empress Eugenie in particular in the mid-1800s, and traversed the turn of the century well into the 1920s [with a whole display of illustrations by Erte, Dulac and Barbier alongside the gowns]...
[click any photo to enlarge]
...and beyond! Of course. Among the extravaganza of "modern frocks that pay tribute to Marie Antoinette Style" in the final, massive room of the exhibition are Jeanne Lanvin’s Marie Antoinette dress, catwalk designs by Vivienne Westwood, Karl Lagerfeld and John Galliano, original costumes worn by Kirsten Dunst in Sofia Coppola’s biographical fantasy film alongside Norma Shearer's frock from the 1938 version, several Moschino creations [she seems to be an obsession of his] including the outrageous "Let Them Eat Cake" numbers made of latex:
...and a cabinet of Manolo Blahnik shoes! [Unsurprisingly, as he's the main sponsor]:
This was an absolutely fabulous experience! We thoroughly enjoyed it.
Marie Antoinette Style at the V&A closes on Sunday 22nd March 2026 - and tickets are sold out, so you need to join as a member (as we are) in order to see it!
