Opening this week at London’s V&A, Marie Antoinette Style is the first UK exhibition dedicated to the most fashionable queen in history.
Featuring more than 250 objects, including loans from the Château de Versailles never before seen outside France along with key objects from the V&A’s collection, the exhibition will explore the origins and countless revivals of the style shaped by the famous Queen of France.
On display will be exceptionally rare personal items owned and worn by Marie Antoinette (1755-1793) such as richly embellished fragments of court dress, the Queen’s own silk slippers and jewels from her private collection.
Also the Queen’s dinner service from the Petit Trianon, her accessories and intimate items from her toilette case.
The exhibition will also feature contemporary clothing. Couture pieces by designers including Moschino, Dior, Chanel, Erdem, Vivienne Westwood and Valentino will be brought together with costumes made for screen, such as for Sofia Coppola’s Oscar winning Marie Antoinette staring Kirsten Dunst, as well as shoes designed by Manolo Blahnik for the film.
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 250 years. Marie Antoinette Style sets out to show how the ill-fated Queen of France has provided a constant source of inspiration.
Sarah Grant, Curator of Marie Antoinette Style said: “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. This exhibition explores that style and the figure at its centre, using a range of exquisite objects belonging to Marie Antoinette, alongside the most beautiful fine and decorative objects that her legacy has inspired. This is the design legacy of an early modern celebrity and the story of a woman whose power to fascinate has never ebbed. 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 eighteenth century.”
Marie Antoinette Style opens at V&A South Kensington on 20 September. For further information: vam.ac.uk
Image: Marie Antoinette Style at V&A South Kensington © Victoria and Albert Museum, London
Smith Greenfield is an independent insurance broker specialising in insurance for exclusive lifestyles and collectors of valuable objects including: art insurance, antiques insurance, jewellery insurance, watch insurance, vintage car insurance, fine wine insurance and more. To discuss specialist insurance for your lifestyle, please contact our Premier Client Adviser, Imran Moideen: imran.moideen@smithgreenfield.co.uk