LIFE BEYOND FIRST CLASS
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GOWNS, GOSSIP, AND THE GILDED GUILLOTINE
The V&A’s Marie Antoinette Style exhibition is a decadent, multisensory journey through fashion, power, and myth—best enjoyed with silk slippers on and a pink brioche in hand.
Film still from Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette.
Photo courtesy of I WANT CANDY LLC. and Zoetrope Corp
Before she was a scapegoat for revolution, Marie Antoinette was Europe’s ultimate tastemaker. Crowned Queen of France at just nineteen, she transformed Versailles into a playground of extravagant fantasy. Her wardrobes, commissioned from the marchandes de modes of Paris, overflowed with embroidered gowns, towering pouf wigs, and diamond-encrusted slippers. She reimagined court life as theater, staging herself as a pastoral shepherdess one moment and a living porcelain doll the next. To her critics, this was excess; to her admirers, it was genius. Either way, her legacy was stitched into silk, powdered in sugar, and served with a side of scandal.
For lovers of fashion history, political intrigue, and theatrical opulence, the upcoming Marie Antoinette Style exhibition at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum is less an exhibition than a pilgrimage. Sponsored by Manolo Blahnik and opening this autumn, the V&A’s first major UK show devoted to France’s most fashionable queen is poised to seduce, scandalize, and mesmerize—just as the woman herself once did. On view through March 22, 2026, this is the exhibition the style-obsessed have been powdering their wigs for.
Few figures have straddled the boundary between icon and cautionary tale quite like Marie Antoinette. For over 250 years, her aesthetic has lingered like rosewater perfume in the cultural imagination. And now, thanks to an extraordinary collection of 250 objects, including personal artifacts from Versailles never before seen in Britain, the V&A is reviving the mythos in glorious, pastel-drenched detail.
Portrait de Marie-Antoinette à la rose, Élisabeth-Louise Vigée Le Brun © Château de Versailles, Dist. Grand Palais RMN Christophe Fouin
Marie-Antoinette’s chair set
© Victoria and Albert Museum, London
His technical process is as layered as his themes. Beginning with pencil sketches, Pisanelli moves to refined large-scale drawings where light and shadow are carefully analyzed before paint ever touches canvas. “The challenge is always compositional,” he says. “Balancing the artificial and the organic, ensuring every element interacts meaningfully. It’s a slow process—some paintings evolve over years.”
But this meticulousness isn’t cold or removed. Pisanelli seeks to provoke emotional and intellectual responses, not merely aesthetic appreciation. “Art should raise questions,” he reflects. “It should inspire critical thinking and engage the viewer’s analytical faculties. In that way, aesthetics meet ethics.”
While his archetypes may appear deeply personal, they are meant to be universal. “These images belong to no specific culture,” Pisanelli says. “They are meant to resonate across latitudes and time, inviting the viewer into a shared contemplative experience.”
Clockwise from Top Left:
The Sutherland Diamonds, comprising diamond necklace with two additional diamond-set sections. © Victoria and Albert Museum, London
Crystal flask with label ‘Eau de Cologne from the ‘Nécessaire de voyage’, belonging to Marie Antoinette. © Grand Palais RMN (musée du Louvre) Michel Urtado
One slipper belonging to Marie Antoinette beaded pink silk. Photo CC0 Paris Musées, Musée Carnavalet - Histoire de Paris
Antoinetta, 2005 by Manolo Blahnik
Marie-Antoinette’s Pearl jewels. Heidi Horten Collection.
© Sotheby’s, Bridgeman Images
Expect to see everything from her jewels and silk slippers to the haunting final note she penned before her execution. Rococo elegance will unfold in silk panels, embroidered fans, and even her dinner service from the Petit Trianon. The exhibition promises a theatrical journey from her Austrian girlhood to the guillotine, and beyond—into the centuries of reverent reinterpretation that followed.
But this isn’t a history lesson in corsets and cake alone. The V&A has curated a sensational mix of 18th-century relics and contemporary couture, with designs from Chanel, Dior, Erdem, Moschino, Vivienne Westwood, and Valentino—as well as Manolo Blahnik’s shoes for Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette film. Paired with immersive scent installations and glittering costume displays, the show will track how Marie Antoinette went from vilified monarch to fashion’s ultimate muse.
For anyone with an appetite for beauty, indulgence, and radical self-expression, the V&A has delivered a feast.
Where to Stay Like a Queen
A few blocks from the museum, The Kensington—a stately townhouse hotel in the heart of South Kensington—is offering a sumptuous Marie Antoinette Package worthy of Versailles. Guests enjoy access to sold-out exhibition tickets, an overnight stay in a regal room or suite (complete with marble bathrooms and Juliet balconies), and a curated box of Parisian delicacies, including Debauve & Gallais chocolate pistoles and Nina’s Versailles-blend tea.
But the jewel in the crown is the hotel’s signature “Let Us Eat Cake” afternoon tea. Served in a cozy drawing room on delicate bone china, the menu features pastel-hued pastries, lemon shortbread, and savory pink brioche sandwiches. Sip the Queen’s Coupe cocktail or a glass of Champagne, and it’s easy to imagine yourself gossiping with courtiers beneath a painted ceiling at the Petit Trianon.
www.doylecollection.com/hotels/the-kensington-hotel
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