The most fashionable, scrutinised and controversial queen in history, Marie Antoinette’s name summons both visions of excess and objects and interiors of great beauty. The Austrian archduchess turned Queen of France had an enormous impact on European taste and fashion in her own time, creating a distinctive style that now has universal appeal and application… Marie Antoinette’s story has been re-told and re-purposed by each successive generation to suit its own ends. The rare combination of glamour, spectacle and tragedy she presents remains as intoxicating today as it was in the 18th century.
This exhibition explores the origins and countless revivals of the style shaped by the most fashionable queen in history, Marie Antoinette. A fashion icon in her own time, and an early modern ‘celebrity’, the dress and interiors modelled and adopted by the ill-fated Queen of France in the final decades of the 18th century have had a lasting influence on over 250 years of design, fashion, film and decorative arts.
The exhibition traces the cultural impact of the Marie Antoinette style, and her ongoing inspiration for leading designers and creatives, from Sofia Coppola and Manolo Blahnik to Moschino and Vivienne Westwood. On display are exceptionally rare personal items owned and worn by Marie Antoinette, including richly embellished fragments of court dress, the Queen’s own silk slippers, and jewels from her private collection. The Queen’s dinner service from the Petit Trianon, her accessories and intimate items from her toilette case are on display for the first time outside of Versailles and France.
Contemporary couture pieces by designers such as Moschino, Dior, Chanel, Erdem, Vivienne Westwood and Valentino will feature alongside costumes made for screen, such as for Sofia Coppola’s Oscar winning Marie Antoinette staring Kirsten Dunst, as well as shoes designed for the film by Manolo Blahnik.
Marie Antoinette shaped not just the fashion, design, interiors, gardens, fine and decorative arts of her own time but has continued to exert an influence over more than two and a half centuries of graphic and decorative arts, fashion, photography, film and performance.
