How Marie Antoinette Shaped Centuries of Fashion and Design

Marie Antoinette lived her life on full display. Born in 1755 as an Austrian archduchess, she was the 15th child of the Holy Roman Emperor and Empress. At 14, she was sent to marry the future king of France, Louis XVI. By 18, she was queen of France. At the palace in Versailles, nearly every aspect of her life, from the way she ate to how she applied her makeup and dressed, took place before an audience.

"Her job was to create a royal spectacle and she was very good at it,” says Helena Cox, assistant curator of London's V&A Museum’s Marie Antoinette Style exhibition. The queen’s youth, bold style and tragic execution by guillotine at age 37 enshrined her as a fashion icon. That imprint still shapes culture today, from celebrity trends to interior design.

“Court fashion was highly prescribed. Marie Antoinette wanted to break free of that and express herself,” says Jeffrey Mayer, professor of fashion history at Syracuse University. Her style signaled a departure from the Baroque era (17th–18th century), which was defined by lavish ornamentation. Instead, she embraced "an elegant, fresh, feminine style, made provocatively modern,” says Cox.

Inspired by Enlightenment thinkers like Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the queen embraced all things pastoral. She regularly used printed cottons such as toile de Jouy, a fabric depicting monochromatic pastoral scenes. Her playful style drew from the Rococo movement, an 18th-century decorative trend that featured curved lines, pastels, wooden marquetry, ribbons and florals. Marie Antoinette's embrace of these motifs helped popularize the style and laid the groundwork for the “French country” aesthetic.

At the Petite Trianon, the queen’s personal retreat in Versailles, she harmonized interior design with fashion. Motifs like her beloved cornflowers adorned everything from her custom tea set to her gowns. Although earlier royals used monograms, she emblazoned “M.A.” on everything from banisters to cosmetics, creating a lasting association between monograms and luxury, says Cox.

The Queen’s Hamlet—an idealized recreation of a working farm—was an early form of what people now call “cottagecore,” the romanticized fantasy of pastoral living.

The queen’s crowning accessory, “the pouf,” was a towering, powdered wig topped with whimsical ornaments that wordlessly expressed her political opinions. “To support smallpox inoculation, she wore a ‘pouf à la inoculation.' To celebrate the French naval victory in the American Revolution, she wore a ship on her head,” says Cox.

Marie Antoinette's mother Empress Maria Theresa wrote her daughter letters urging moderation in how she dressed, but her teenage daughter took no heed. Antoinette's most scandalous fashion moment was captured in Élisabeth-Louise Vigée-Le Brun’s 1783 painting of the queen. Her outfit became infamously known as the chemise à la reine (the queen's shift). The gauzy gown was seen as unpatriotic for using imported cottons and likened to an undergarment. Its informality blurred class lines, scandalizing society.

This insistence on self-expression would seal Marie Antoinette’s fame in the annals of fashion, but it also fueled the growing resentment against her as the French Revolution gained momentum.

Marie Antoinette was the original influencer. “Her image was a muse for the Galerie des Modes et Costumes Francais, among the first fashion magazines of the 18^th century. All the fashion plates look like Marie Antoinette,” says Cox. “After she wore a particular style, it was written up in the magazines as à la reine [of the queen].”

Life-sized fashion dolls modeled on her image were dressed in her latest gowns and shipped across Europe so her style could be replicated abroad. “Her hair, an ashy blonde color, sparked a particular color of silk, cheveux de la reine [hair of the queen]. The color was used in riding harnesses, evening gowns [and] shoes,” says Cox.

“When the king joked that her brownish purple dress made her look like a flea, or ‘puce’ in French, the color became trendy, with variations including ventre de puce (flea belly) and cuisse de puce (flea thigh),” Cox adds.

The palace of Versailles was open to the public (as long as you met the dress code), and visitors could tour the queen’s closet. They could also visit the Parisian shop of Rose Bertin, Antoinette’s stylist and unofficial “Minister of Fashion.” They could even commission a copy of her latest look…as long as they waited the mandated two weeks after the queen debuted it.

Bertin’s Paris shop, Le Grand Mogol (The Grand Mogul) “functioned as an early couture salon, showing new collections each season and maintaining a fully staffed workroom. This was the blueprint for the modern 'fashion house' or maison de couture,” says Mayer.

Even if you couldn’t afford a full gown, you could enter Bertin’s shop “and emulate certain elements of the queen’s wardrobe through trimmings,” says Cox, which allowed the queen’s style to trickle down to the masses.

Although Marie Antoinette’s extravagant style made her a target in the French Revolution, even her death in 1793 sparked fashion trends: After her execution, women began tying red ribbons around their necks to evoke the guillotine.

“Her style is so quotable. Her devil-may-care attitude embraced fashion,” says Cox. Empress Eugénie, the wife of Napoleon III of France, collected Marie Antoinette’s possessions that had been sold off during the Revolution. She mounted the first exhibition in her memory, turning the Petite Trianon into a museum in 1867.

“It was the revival of the Ancien Régime [old regime] with Antoinette as key muse,” says Cox.

In the 19th century, photographers published photos of the restored palace, inspiring the Rococo Revival (approximately 1840-70) in America and Europe. It’s here that her image began to shift into the realm of fantasy, Cox explains.

In the Art Deco period following World War I, “Marie Antoinette becomes an escapist figure, a cipher for a fairy tale princess or wicked queen,” says Cox.

After World War II, fashion designer “Christian Dior’s ‘New Look’ recalled Antoinette’s wasp-like waist and huge skirts,” says Mayer. Dior designed his salon to look like the Petite Trianon, painting the walls "Petite Trianon Grey"—“the inspiration for the now-patented Christian Dior Grey,” Mayer says.

There are also echoes of the chemise à la reine in the gauzy dresses of the ‘70s and the influence of her exaggerated court gowns in over-the-top ‘80s designs, Mayer adds. In the 1990s, fashion designers John Galliano, Alexander McQueen and Vivienne Westwood openly paid homage to Marie Antoinette’s opulent style.

“She is a muse in every era,” says Cox. “She represents creativity, being your own person—the perfect cocktail for a performer."

Pop star Madonna performed “Vogue” at the 1990 MTV Music Awards dressed as the extravagant queen. And Sofia Coppola’s 2006 film “Marie Antoinette” riffed on her ultra feminine aesthetic, inspiring Taylor Swift’s 2022 “Bejeweled” video.

Today, Marie Antoinette’s gowns survive only in fragments, a reminder of her violent end. These remnants also invite us to endlessly reassemble the spectacle of the most fashionable queen in history.