The V&A has gone full rococo with Marie Antoinette: Style. Stepping into the galleries feels a bit like tumbling down a gilded rabbit hole. Feathered wigs, silk brocades, diamond-encrusted everything—it’s Versailles turned inside out. But behind the froth and finery, the show slyly reminds us that Marie Antoinette wasn’t just a fashion plate; she was a Habsburg teenager sent to cement a French alliance, a queen adored, then vilified, and finally destroyed by the very stage she tried to command.
Marie Antoinette arrived in France in 1770 as a fourteen-year-old bride, wed to the future Louis XVI. The exhibition opens with a replica of her silver wedding dress—an outfit so extravagant it required attendants to help her move. It sets the tone: her life was always theatre, and her clothes were her script. The V&A has pulled in over 250 objects, many from Versailles itself, to show how she cultivated an image of grace and grandeur while navigating one of the most politically precarious courts in Europe.
The gowns, of course, are jaw-dropping. Pastel silks embroidered with flowers so fine they look painted, bodices stiff enough to make a modern spine ache, skirts as wide as small dining tables. But the show doesn’t just dazzle. Alongside the finery are the caricatures: pamphlets mocking her for extravagance, satirical prints portraying her as Madame Déficit draining the treasury. She was a young foreign queen in a court suspicious of Austria, and public opinion was a weapon wielded against her with relish.
And yet, she tried to push against the spectacle. The gallery devoted to her private life shows her fascination with a more natural style: flowing muslin gowns, straw hats, the infamous “chemise à la reine” that scandalised Paris by looking more like lingerie than state attire. At her retreat in the Petit Trianon she played shepherdess in a silk chemise, milking porcelain cows while Versailles simmered with resentment. The exhibit makes clear how this mix of innocence and indulgence added fuel to the fire—her version of rustic simplicity looked like mockery to a hungry public.
The sensory surprises are particularly good. Perfumed busts waft smells of roses, musk, beeswax and even mildew, reminding Versailles was as much stench as splendour. You can almost smell the powder, sweat and candle smoke that clung to those shimmering gowns.
The narrative takes a darker turn as the Revolution closes in. A pair of dainty silk slippers worn by the teenage dauphine are juxtaposed with the simple clothes from her final years. There’s her prison chemise, her last letter, even the prayer book she carried to the guillotine in 1793. The spectacle shrinks down to silence. It’s unexpectedly moving—after so much theatricality, these fragile scraps feel devastatingly human.
The finale whisks back to glamour, tracing her long afterlife in fashion and film: Sofia Coppola’s bubble-gum Antoinette, Vivienne Westwood’s punk-rococo gowns, Moschino’s camp excess. It’s a reminder that though the queen lost her head, she never left the stage.
History has cast Marie Antoinette as villain, victim, fashion icon, even proto-celebrity. The V&A doesn’t force you to choose. Instead, it layers myth and material, silk and scandal, until you see her not as a single truth but as a mirror—reflecting the fantasies, fears, and obsessions of every age since her own.
Marie Antoinette Style is at the V&A until March 22, 2026
All photos © Victoria and Albert Museum, London
Another interesting and well written article…I hope I have the opportunity to see this special exhibition.
Fabulous