You could say that Marie Antoinette was the original celebrity. The last Queen of France worked with personal stylists, had her barnet done by celebrity hairdressers, and set the agenda for the fashion of the day. She had her own personal brand – an elegant ‘MA’ monogram – which she plastered all over her jewellery, furniture, belongings, and even most intimate toiletries.
Like many celebs today, the queen’s dodgy reputation, founded on obscene rumours of debauchery, promiscuity and gorging on cake, was created by tabloid sensationalism. So it’s only fitting that a comprehensive exhibition dedicated to the style of the world’s most fashionable and infamous monarch should be just as fabulous, bold, sparkly and, at times, salacious.
Featuring 250 objects, including loans from Versailles that have never been exhibited outside of France before now, Marie Antoinette Style takes visitors on a journey through the ill-fated queen’s forward-thinking wardrobe, dizzyingly elaborate jewellery, lavish interiors, huge hairstyles and enduring influence on fashion and art today. Alongside the myriad guffaw-inducing riches on display (a replica of the most expensive necklace ever made in France is particularly astonishing), mysteries surrounding the queen are confidently dispelled. Did she really say, ‘Let them eat cake’? (No.) Was the coupette glass actually modelled on her breast? (No, but a very realistic porcelain ‘breast bowl’ commissioned by Antoinette is on display.)
What appears is a portrait of Antoinette as a true innovator of taste
The largest part of the exhibition is dedicated to her life as queen in the run up to her execution. The display feels intimate, personal, as though we are really getting to know her. We see Antionette’s toilette, a monogrammed silver set of bowls, vials and jugs which she used every morning. Letters from the 19-year-old queen detailing her loneliness in court are shown. A section is dedicated to the smells of her life, where visitors are invited to sniff on the wafts of violet, lavender and musk that made up her powder and rouge, and later the mildew, sewage and body-odour stench of her prison cell.
It’s sympathetic towards the doomed queen, painting her as a visionary with a devotion to fashion and beauty, who had a lot of bad luck, and bore the brunt of the anger directed towards the final French monarchs, thanks to a combination of libellous gossip and misogyny. Pornographic revolutionary pamphlets show just how she came to be so hated by the public, with illustrations of the queen getting off with her ladies in waiting, being ‘penetrated by the nation’ and cuckolding her husband. After getting to know her so intimately, it all seems rather unfair.
Ultimately, what appears through this collection of objects is a portrait of Antoinette as a true innovator of taste, someone who thought about every aesthetic decision she made, no matter how frivolous it might seem. After the birth of her first son she made motherhood trendy and nursing mothers began to be depicted in fashion journals. Her towering hairstyles, or ‘poufs’, illustrated historical events – from war victories to the invention of the smallpox vaccination – who’d have thought it? Her commitment to clothing stayed with her until her dying day, and she ordered the latest styles to her prison cell. As a lifelong clothes addict, she has my respect for this.
The final sections of the exhibition are an exuberant illustration of Antionette’s lasting influence on fashion, art, and cinema. A collection of candy-coloured Manolo Blahnik heels designed for Sophie Coppola’s 2006 film will make any fashion geek click their kitten heels in joy. Glorious dresses made by Chanel, Dior, John Galliano and Moschino appear like marvellous tiered cakes, sometimes literally.
Marie Antoinette Style is a joy to experience, and a must-see for anyone with a modicum of interest in fashion. It is a thorough, moving and vivacious display of a young woman with expensive tastes and the budget to match. By the end, you might just find yourself on her side. After all, if you married into all of that opulence at just age 14, wouldn’t you spend it all on flashy clothes, diamonds and hairstyles too?
