The UK’s first exhibition on French queen Marie Antoinette closes at London’s V&A on 22 March 2026.
Visually sumptuous and rich in history, Marie Antoniette Style at the V&A is an exhibition that delights both fashion lovers and historians.
Not only does it include exceptional loans from the Château de Versailles never before seen out of France, and some personal affects of Marie Antoniette including a silk slippers, jewels and a richly embellished fragment of a court dress, but it also traces the cultural impact of her style and ongoing inspiration for leading designers and creatives from Sofia Coppola and Manolo Blahnik to Moschino and Vivienne Westwood.
Above: Costume, Andrea Grossi. Photo: Courtesy Andrea Grossi. Main image: Kate Moss wearing Sarah Burton for Alexander McQueen, Van Cleef & Arpels, and Julian d’Ys, The Ritz, Paris 2012. Photographs of Kate Moss at the Paris Ritz for Vogue US April 2012 issue. © Tim Walker.
Contemporary clothing in display includes couture pieces by designers such as Moschino, Dior, Chanel, Erdem, Vivienne Westwood and Valentino and 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.
The exhibition is sponsored by Manolo Blahnik and you can see why. It’s a perfect pairing.
Antonietta, 2005 by Manolo Blahnik.
Overall it’s presented chronologically, starting in 1770, and ends at Marie Antoinette’s execution in 1793.
Marie Antoinette: The Origins of a Style sets the scene by presenting the life of Marie Antoinette and telling the story of the beginnings of the style she forged and shaped.
The exhibition’s second section, Marie Antoinette Memorialised: The Birth of a Style Cult explores the revival of Marie Antoinette’s style in the mid-1800s (1800 – 1890), at the impetus of Empress Eugénie.
Slipper belonging to Marie Antoinette beaded pink silk. Photo: CC0 Paris Musées / Musée Carnavalet – Histoire de Paris.
A romanticised and sentimental view of the queen took hold and a phenomenal wave of interest continued throughout the century, peaking again in the 1880s and 1890s. Elements of Marie- Antoinette’s style became the ‘French’ or ‘French Revival’ style – the dominant style in Britain and North America for more than 50 years. English collectors sought to acquire objects, furniture and mementoes associated with the queen and important collections of eighteenth-century French art were formed.
Highlight objects include fancy dress costumes by Worth and other couturiers and photographs by Eugène Atget and Francis Frith.
Marie Antoinette Style exhibition at the V&A, London.
Marie Antoinette: Enchantment and Illusion – the exhibition’s third section looks at the late 19th Century when the Marie Antoinette style entered a new phase of fantasy, magic and fairy tales. The queen’s image came to embody escapism and beauty, as well as decadence and debauchery.
The final section, Marie Antoinette Re-Styled, considers the modern and contemporary legacy of the Marie Antoinette style from the 20th century to the present day, in fashion, performance and pop culture. Couture pieces by designers such as Moschino, Dior, Chanel, Erdem, Vivienne Westwood and Valentino alongside photographs by Tim Walker and Robert Polidori will highlight Marie Antoinette’s continued influence on fashion globally.
Film still from Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette. Photo courtesy of I WANT CANDY LLC. and Zoetrope Corp.
The exhibition closes on 22 March 2026 so get in quick if you haven’t already seen it.
The V&A gift shop also has some fabulous Marie Antoinette merch including Marie Antoinette-inspired costume jewellery.
