Few figures in history have commanded fashion’s imagination quite like Marie Antoinette. She was the queen who turned Versailles into a stage set, who used dress as both armor and indulgence, and whose silks and feathers became symbols of both liberation and excess. It is precisely this legacy that the Victoria and Albert Museum will spotlight with Marie Antoinette Style, the first exhibition in the United Kingdom devoted entirely to her impact. Sponsored by Manolo Blahnik and running until March 22, 2026, it brings together the queen’s legacy with a designer who has long considered her his muse.
Blahnik’s fascination with Antoinette began in childhood when his mother read him Stefan Zweig’s 1932 biography as a bedtime story. What might have seemed an eccentric choice left a lasting impression. From then on, Blahnik devoured every account of her he could find. He made pilgrimages to Versailles, wandering the Hall of Mirrors and Antoinette’s private chambers in near-religious awe. He could not sleep for days, transfixed by the shimmer of silks and the haunting aura of the queen’s world. For him, creativity became a form of time travel, a way of stepping into a past where beauty and peril were inseparable.
Over the decades he has returned to Antoinette’s theatricality, weaving echoes of her powdered past into modern collections. His work for Sofia Coppola’s 2006 film Marie Antoinette, which went on to win the Academy Award for costume design, showed how fully he understood her image. The candy tones, the extravagance, and the sense of fragility carried by each shoe helped define the visual language of the film itself.
Curated by Dr. Sarah Grant, the exhibition will not only explore Antoinette’s fashion but also present Blahnik’s interpretation of her. For the first time, the designer’s original sketches will be displayed alongside the Marie Antoinette-inspired shoes he has crafted over the years. The inclusion of his drawings marks an intimate moment in his career. It reveals a process that once began in the V&A’s own archives, where he studied eighteenth-century shoes as references for his designs.
This encounter between the museum’s collection and Blahnik’s imagination forms the heart of the exhibition. It historical fragments can ignite contemporary creativity, and how the line between past and present is often more porous than it seems.
In celebration, Blahnik has produced a capsule of eleven styles, each interpreting a fragment of Antoinette’s world. Valois recalls her passion for jewellery with pleated silk, frayed fringe, and a brooch-like embellishment in pink satin. Rohan is painted in Rococo pastels, a nod to her rose garden and powdered complexion. Fontanblas takes its stripes from a jacket she wore in a portrait of 1785. Montemedy carries floral motifs inspired by her private furniture, tufted by hand.
These shoes are not replicas but translations. They take the theatricality of eighteenth-century France and render it in a language that is recognisably Blahnik’s, precise and sensual yet always steeped in history.
The V&A exhibition, open until March 2026, is an exploration of how history survives through imagination. For Blahnik, it is also the culmination of a lifelong conversation with a queen who never stopped inspiring his creations. The capsule range serves as a reminder that the dialogue between fashion and history is always unfinished, and always worth revisiting.
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