REVIEW: Marie Antoinette Style

The opening room of the V&A’s autumn blockbuster is almost empty. It has black and white marquetry flooring and powder pink walls. To the right there is an alabaster bust and a full length oil of Marie Antoinette in all her finery. On the main wall is a simple oval portrait of a young girl with a quote beneath, ‘All eyes will be on you’, a mother’s advice to the fourteen year old Austrian princess as she arrived at the French court to marry the future Louis XVI. Watch her carefully. Her eyes do move.

And wow, did she heed the advice. The frocks! The jewels! The hairstyles! The porcelain! She was the ultimate star. Among the treasures on display are the young queen’s shoes – she had four pairs a week – as she mastered the Versailles Glide. They are miniscule. There are handwritten letters demonstrating her unhappiness in the early years of her marriage (unconsummated for seven years).

She becomes a mother and her style is more confident – simple and naturalistic – the famous toiles, flower-strewn china, flowing gowns. And the fashionable slavishly followed her – a baby became the ultimate must-have accessory at court. There is a fun section where you can smell the perfume from four Marie Antoinette busts: a masquerade ball, powder and rouge, her English garden (le Petit Trianon), the Conciergerie prison call.

As her unpopularity grows, the rumours against her swirl and there is a section of pamphlets and sketches that wouldn’t be out of place on the worst of today’s social media. There is a room covering her time in captivity and death. See her final handwritten note and a lock of her and her son’s hair, a guillotine blade and photos of a gruesome death mask, on display at Madame Tussaud’s in London.

After her death, her legacy. She was the ultimate fairytale princess and the V&A has done her proud. Here she is as The Snow Queen, as Cinderella. In the last room, we are dressing up again. Shoes and costumes from Sofia Coppola’s film, plus gowns from designers from Galliano to Vivienne Westwood.

Enormously enjoyable for the whole family, it brilliantly combines history, fame and fashion. Today’s kids will relate instantly to the cult of celebrity and fickleness of public opinion. It is so OTT, so larger than life, you have to pinch yourself that those tiny silk shoes, the handwritten notes belonged to a real, living woman, not a Disney princess. As such, they become incredibly poignant.

Marie Antoinette Style V&A to 22 March 2026 Tickets: £23–£25 adults, £15 ages 12–25, U12s free.

Emily Turner