Long before Jackie O or Princess Diana, Marie Antoinette was the original socialite and style icon. France’s last queen was renowned for her fashion prowess and her huge influence over the country’s decorative arts and luxury trades. Amid revolutionary uprisings, however, Marie Antoinette’s lavish lifestyle came to symbolize the excesses of an old, enemy regime and the public’s fascination soon turned into scrutiny and outrage. She could not escape the guillotine.
In death, Marie Antoinette was reviled. Centuries later, her legacy has taken on a life of its own. The fallen royal remains a source of enduring inspiration for many of the world’s top designers, including Manolo Blahnik, John Galliano, Jean-Paul Gaultier, Karl Lagerfeld, and Vivienne Westwood.
The dramatic rise, fall, and stratospheric rise of Marie Antoinette is the subject of a new exhibition at the V&A Museum in London, on view through March 22, 2026. The first exhibition dedicated to the ill-fated queen in the U.K., the show boasts some 250 objects, including loans that have never before travelled outside Versailles.
Installation view of “Marie Antoinette Style” at V&A Museum, London, U.K. Photo courtesy of V&A Museum.
“I do not share the King’s tastes,” Marie Antoinette once confided to a family friend about life with Louis XVI, who she had married when she was just 14 years old. “He is only interested in hunting and in mechanical work.”
Much of the couple’s incompatibility came down to the Queen’s extravagant appetite for parties, gambling, clothes, sumptuous interiors, and the arts. She became an important patron, commissioning Jean-Démosthène Dugourc among others to redesign and furnish the Petit Trianon, her private chateau on the grounds of Versailles. So, the V&A asks, why do we still refer to the opulence of her era by using her husband’s name? Rather than “Louis XIV style,” it suggests, we might more accurately describe the most resplendent objects as “Marie Antoinette style.”
In that spirit, here are five of the show’s most spectacular examples of Marie Antoinette style.
Slippers
Slipper belonging to Marie Antoinette in beaded pink silk. Photo: CC0 Paris Musées / Musée Carnavalet – Histoire de Paris.
Though very few items from Marie Antoinette’s wardrobe survive, her shoes are among the most coveted items. At one time, she received four new pairs each week. These pink silk slippers decorated with very fine black beads were worn with the , the most formal type of court dress. Like many of her peers, the queen perfected the so-called “Versailles glide,” a particularly graceful way of walking that gives the impression of feet barely touching the ground.
Sèvres Cup
Sèvres Bol-sein ou Jatte-téton, bowl tripod support. Photo: Martine Beck-Coppola, © Grand Palais Rmn (Sèvres – Manufacture et musée nationaux).
Marie Antoinette’s famous , or “breast bowl,” was part of a larger porcelain service of 108 pieces commissioned for her charming ceremonial dairy at Rambouillet, the King’s holiday getaway outside Paris. Though functional, the dairy was primarily intended for the Queen to indulge in the late 18th-century fashion for tasting dairy products.
The design is a much more realistic interpretation of a classical Greek “mastos” drinking vessel, similarly shaped like a woman’s breast. The Sèvres example’s greater naturalism has caused many to speculate that it was modeled on Marie Antoinette’s own breast. The bowl is supported by a tripod decorated with ram heads.
Domino
A domino in the style work by French courtiers at public balls and masquerades, 1765-70. Photo: Jo Lawson-Tancred.
As so few of Marie Antoinette’s clothes have survived, the V&A has provided suitable examples of items she is known to have worn in her lifetime. This majestically voluminous cloak, known as a “domino,” was typically worn by French courtiers to cover their outfits at masked balls. It has a hood and is fastened at the front by bows. Here it is styled with a black domino mask and a handheld fan. It is displayed alongside the reproduction of a black-and-white print of Marie Antoinette wearing a domino at a masquerade in Paris in 1782.
Armchair
Marie-Antoinette’s chair set. Photo: © Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
This dainty, gilt walnut armchair with silk embroidered upholstery was part of a set of four. It was used in Marie Antoinette’s private dressing room during her last few summers at Château de Saint-Cloud, the getaway acquired by the queen in 1785. Like all of Marie Antoinette’s possessions, the piece of furniture prominently bears her monogram “MA” in a cresting medallion carved with roses and myrtle.
Pearl jewel
Marie Antoinette’s pearl jewels. Photo: © Sotheby’s, Bridgeman Images.
Marie Antoinette had an extensive collection of jewels from the very start of her reign. Some had been acquired using money from her mother, the Hapsburg empress Maria Theresa and others given to her by Louis XV upon her marriage to his son. By the time she became queen in 1774, Marie Antoinette had a private collection of diamonds and precious stones worth some 2.5 million , thus surpassing the riches of even most European queens. Of course, over her lifetime, Marie Antoinette’s wealth of shiny treasures only grew. One of the biggest changes to her collecting habits came with the rise of neoclassicism, which brought simpler styles of dress and accessories into fashion.
Source: Exhibition - news.artnet.com
