A Glimpse of the Glittering Diamonds of the V&A's Marie Antoinette Style
A new special exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London explores the enduring style influence of Marie Antoinette and showcases some jewelry pieces she actually owned
The public’s enduring fascination with Marie Antoinette, the Habsburg archduchess who became France’s doomed queen consort, is captured in Marie Antoinette Style, a new exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. The exhibition features numerous pieces of jewelry, some of which are examples of pieces worn by contemporary women, and a few which were genuinely owned by Marie Antoinette herself. Today, we’re delving in to the range of diamonds on display.
“The most fashionable, scrutinised and controversial queen in history” is the way that Sarah Grant, the curator of Marie Antoinette Style at the V&A, describes the famous French queen consort.
She explains, “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.”
When she traveled from Vienna to Paris for her wedding to the Dauphin of France in 1770, fourteen-year-old Marie Antoinette could not have imagined the way her life would unfold. She certainly would have been stunned by the way that her story continues to be told two centuries after her death. Just eighteen when her husband inherited the throne, Queen Marie Antoinette enjoyed the lavish trappings of her gilded life in France’s palaces, following in the footsteps of those who had established the luxurious court at Versailles long before her arrival on the scene. As time went on, she took pains to establish a feminine, pastoral-inspired style that deliberately contrasted with the splendor of her predecessors—though the changes weren’t enough to sway the tide of public opinion about the monarchy.
Eventually, Marie Antoinette’s world crashed down around her, and the glittering image of the royals and their court became a battering ram for those whipping up public opinion against her. The end of the monarchy, and her subsequent imprisonment and execution, ultimately offered her a towering legacy. Grant notes that “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 18th century.”
The new exhibition at the V&A explores both the stylistic choices made by Marie Antoinette during her lifetime and the immense influence that she has had in the world of decorative arts in the centuries since her death. Jewels, clothing fragments, and other artifacts from Marie Antoinette’s personal collection are displayed alongside designs influenced by her, including pieces by contemporary designers and creatives like Sofia Coppola, Manolo Blahnik, Moschino, and the late Vivienne Westwood.
The exhibition includes a whole range of artifacts on display, but of course it’s the jewelry that interests me most. There are a small handful of jewels genuinely linked to Marie Antoinette on display, as well as pieces that would have been worn by her contemporaries in courts across Europe. And there’s no way to mount an exhibition about the style influence of Marie Antoinette without tackling the problem of the Affair of the Diamond Necklace, the legacy of which is prominently featured at the V&A.
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