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lite.cnn.com - on gopher - inofficial
ARTICLE VIEW:
How Marie Antoinette became the most fashionable queen in history
By Leah Dolan, CNN
Updated:
3:57 AM EDT, Fri September 19, 2025
Source: CNN
Marie Antoinette died over 230 years ago. But in the modern day, the
teen queen’s presence remains widely felt.
A-listers from Kylie Jenner to Miley Cyrus have embodied her likeness
for fashion magazines, wearing diaphanous frocks or towering wigs
surrounded by a selection of teeth-rotting confectionery. Last year,
Chappell Roan performed at the Lollapalooza music festival dressed as
Marie Antoinette in a crimped wig and Rococo gown — reviving a pop
star trope that began with Madonna at the 1990 MTV Awards. Fashion
designers such as John Galliano, Karl Lagerfeld, Vivienne Westwood and
Alessandro Michele have all mined the royal for inspiration. For the
2016 Fenty x Puma collection, Rihanna — who is the global ambassador
and creative director — imagined what the 18th century figure might
wear to the gym. The last queen consort of France has even had her
“beauty secrets” published in Vogue, in honor of her 262nd
birthday.
Much like Marilyn Monroe or Joan of Arc, Marie Antoinette has evolved
beyond being a historical figure to become a concept. Her image is now
shorthand for beauty, decadence, rebellion, and misogyny. This week,
the memorialization continues at London’s Victoria & Albert Museum,
which is staging the UK’s first-ever exhibition on the fashionable
queen.
“Marie Antoinette was a fashion and style icon in her own time, but
there had never been an exhibition that really looked at that
incredible legacy,” Sarah Grant, the exhibition’s curator, told
CNN. Antoinette’s court was crowded with hairdressers, dressmakers
and milliners, all working to create the lavish styles that defined the
late 18th-century French fashion scene. Those trendsetting choices not
only made Antoinette a prominent style icon, but also gave her the
power to influence society — laying the groundwork for what one would
consider “celebrity style” today.
At the V&A, visitors can wander through pastel-pink rooms and bear
witness to 250 objects that piece together a picture of Antoinette’s
life: From her dazzling jewels — seen publicly for the first time
since her death, once packed up by the queen herself in 1791 as she
attempted to flee France to avoid persecution — to countless
watercolour fans, silk gowns and beaded slippers. Her favourite scents,
such as the orris root, tuberose, violet and musk that she used to
perfume herself in the morning, were recreated to immerse the audience
in the pageantry of the 1700’s French court. But it wasn’t all
sweet smelling roses: Before entering the crimson-walled room that
features Antoinette’s stained prison chemise uniform, as well as the
guillotine blade allegedly used to behead her, Grant conjured another,
more pungent but equally familiar fragrance to the royal — the
mildew, sewage and smells of the polluted Seine river, which ran near
the prison cell she was held in for weeks.
Antoinette’s legacy isn’t entirely without controversy. During her
reign, she was subject to gossip, ridicule and slander in revolutionary
propaganda. Satirical cartoons painted her as sexually devious,
assuming her failure to produce an heir was because of an unbridled
lasciviousness. She has been depicted in various ridiculous forms —
as a mythical half-human, half-bird creature; a rabid hyena; and a
double-ended beast with King Louis XVI. For many today, Antoinette is
remembered for her opulence and subsequent detachment from the strife
of the French people during a time of immense poverty.
But the watershed moment for Antoinette in the courtroom of public
opinion may have been Antonia Fraser’s 2001 biography, and Sofia
Coppola’s subsequent 2006 Oscar-winning film adaptation starring
Kirsten Dunst, which presented a compelling and sympathetic — though
not uncritical — portrayal of the former queen. Fraser’s account of
Antoinette was “told through a female lens,” explained Grant, one
that positioned her as a child bride married off for political
advantages at the age of 14 — suddenly with the weight of an empire
on her shoulders. “There was a lot of empathy,” Grant said, noting
that the V&A exhibition “wouldn’t have been possible” without it.
And while Coppola’s movie took creative liberties, with its New
Romantic soundtrack and custom-made Manolo Blahnik pumps, it brought
Fraser’s research to new audiences. In the view of Hannah Strong, a
film critic and the author of “Sofia Coppola: Forever Young,” the
director — who is the daughter of celebrated filmmaker Francis Ford
Coppola — may have “resonated” with the plight of Antoinette
herself. “Marie Antoinette was this young woman who came from
enormous privilege and was thrust into this life that she never chased
herself,” Strong said. “I think (Coppola) really identifies with
this idea of women in history who have been maligned or mistreated.”
The film was a point of entry to the world of Antoinette for the
designer Jeremy Scott. “Sofia Coppola’s rendition is just so
visually beautiful,” he recalled to CNN over the phone. “The
colors, the bon-bons.” For Scott, the empathy captured by Dunst’s
empathetic performance offered a different perspective of Antoinette.
“I have a soft spot for her,” he said, laughing that he would have
even aided her ill-fated attempt to escape from Paris. “I would have
been like, ‘Girl, hide here!’”
Scott’s Fall-Winter 2020 Antoinette-inspired dresses, tiered gowns
frosted like cakes and Rococo dresses shortened in to minis, designed
for Moschino, the Italian fashion label where he was previously
creative director, are on display in the exhibition. “That
maximalism, that frivolousness, that panache, there’s a joy to it,”
he said. “It’s fantasy and frivolity. To me that’s the backbone
of fashion.”
Those patisserie-style frocks are exhibited alongside other modern-day
interpretations of the queen’s impeccable wardrobe, from Milena
Canonero’s Oscar-winning costumes for Coppola’s film to Galliano
and Lagerfeld’s designs for Dior and Chanel, respectively. The result
is an impressive sartorial tribute that maps Antoinette’s lasting
impact, which Grant attributes to the simple fact that hers is a great
story. “All of this plays out against one of the most seismic
episodes in history, which is the French Revolution. So I think it’s
this perfect storm: this tragic, doomed life and this fashionable,
incredibly sparking personality,” she said.
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