Journal

Marie Antoinette Style at the V&A: A Close Look at the Textiles

I went to this exhibition expecting to be mildly interested. Eighteenth-century French court life is not really my territory. Too gilded, too tragic, too far from the making practices I usually spend time with.

I came out genuinely fascinated.

Almost nothing in the exhibition is confirmed to have belonged to Marie Antoinette herself. What the V&A have done instead is gather textiles and dress from other collections that are close enough to what she would have worn, and the effect is remarkable. It stops being a relic show and becomes something full of life and extraordinary craft skill.

What I focused on

I decided to ignore shoes, fans, jewellery, and the execution galleries entirely, and spend my time with the fabrics and dress. There is a lot to look at: state dress with silver-wrapped embroidery so heavy it must have been nearly impossible to walk in; the painted warp silks she favoured for daily wear; a commission sample that makes you understand immediately why her annual dress budget topped the equivalent of £1,500,000

The film goes through the pieces in some detail.

The Gallery of photographs

I took a lot of close-up detail shots while I was there. The embroidery and fabric construction really only make sense at that scale.  You can click through and browse at your leisure.

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