Unbelievably, Marie Antoinette Style, the new exhibition at the V&A, which opened this weekend, is the first ever Marie Antoinette exhibition in the UK. Curated by Sarah Grant, it tells the stylistic story and lasting impact of the most fashionable queen in history through the use of gowns, textiles, porcelain, jewellery, scent and furniture. While fashion might be the primary focus of this exhibition, it is undoubtedly a place to glean interior design inspiration; fashion and interiors often go hand-in-hand, after all. ‘I hope that people can see how she still inspires style today and understand more of her as a real person just like us,’ says Sarah Grant. ‘We have tried to show that through inanimate objects’.
The exhibition is about more than just rooms filled with historic artefacts; it is a compendium of objects that tell the stories of someone’s life, intentions, and aesthetic language. ‘I think her style was so good, because she was sourcing from the very best, and for me, it’s just classic, good taste,’ Grant adds. In an effort to capture how we might borrow some of this good taste for our own spaces, we spoke to Dr Lindsay Macnaughton, Art Historian and Director of the MA Decorative Arts and Historic Interiors at the University of Buckingham, as well Sarah Grant herself, to unpack Marie Antoinette’s objects and ethos. Here is what we learned…
Define your spaces
Marie Antoinette teaches us about the importance of defining our spaces. Some rooms within royal residences were made for entertaining the apex of society, like foreign dignitaries and other members of the court. The public spaces were typically situated at the beginning of an enfilade of a palace. Other rooms were meant for royals to enjoy with more private audiences: these most intimate of rooms would typically be found at the end said enfilade, behind closed doors. ‘In spaces where she is not having to “perform” her role, there was more freedom to add personal touches,’ Macnaughton says of the queen’s private spaces, ‘and those happen to be the spaces that survive today and best encapsulate Marie Antoinette's personal taste, as these final refurnishing sprees show more maturity and confidence—like the cabinet de la Méridienne at Versailles, for example,’ she explains.
In our own homes, we must also think about how we define our spaces. We have already started to see the downsides of having open floor plans. Private spaces like kitchens (dirty dishes!) and family snugs (toys everywhere!) perhaps shouldn’t always be visible from formal entertaining spaces. We can also think of spaces like powder rooms and spare bedrooms as our cabinets or boudoirs; our places to show off and celebrate personal taste. They’re small in scale, so expensive finishes can be used more abundantly. Additionally, they’re rooms in which people spend less time. So, go ahead and use that shocking wallpaper and gaudy Murano chandelier; these rooms are meant to be enjoyed in small doses by those who know you the best.
Get Global
The young queen also reminds us to look beyond our surroundings and incorporate global elements. Chinoiserie, Turquerie, and even a dash of Anglomania (Tristram Hunt reminded us in his commencement speech that she painted some of her paneling at the Petit Trianon to resemble Wedgwood’s jasperware) were all at play. In the exhibition, we see a full-length portrait of Marie Antoinette dressed in robe à la turque (a Turkish style gown), as well as gowns made of westernised interpretations of ikat patterns and Indian chintzes—not too dissimilar from what would have been used for upholstery. Referencing other cultures in clothing and in interiors showed education, diplomacy, and access to something exotic, new and exciting.
This multiculturalism can also offer a sense of worldliness to our interiors. However, we do (and should) go about it differently than they did in the eighteenth century. They took motifs from lacquerwork and porcelain from China, as well as Indian textiles and changed them to suit their tastes. These reworked objects took on new meanings altogether, in a practice most would call appropriation. Today, we are more inclined to display an object from abroad for what it is—a work of art or tale of craftsmanship in its own right: suzanis proudly hung on the wall, a wooden bowl from Lamu in the middle of one’s breakfast table, and a stool upholstered in Japanese indigo at one’s dresser. They’re displayed from the vantage point of appreciation and admiration.
Show your roots
Marie Antoinette teaches us to incorporate our heritage into our interiors. ‘Her taste was very eclectic,’ says Macnaughton of the young queen’s decorating sensibilities, ‘especially when she redecorated in the 1780s; she mixed new things with old things.’ In other words, while she certainly commissioned contemporary pieces from fashionable cabinetmakers (or ébénistes) like Jean Henri Riesener and Martin Carlin (like the gorgeous petit coffre à bijoux by Carlin on loan from Versailles at the exhibition), she also incorporated pieces from previous generations into her spaces.
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‘One thing that Marie Antoinette leans into is using pieces from the royal collection,’ says Macnaughton, ‘she selects objects that are quite rich and loaded with historical meaning, as well’. Marie Antoinette was aware of the significance that objects hold. On the collections of Louis XIV, Macnaughton describes how Marie Antoinette carefully selected various works of art like hardstone vases, precious objets de vertu, and bronze statues for her state bedroom at Versailles. ‘They’re status objects—objects that would have been found in Renaissance cabinets of curiosity,’ she explains, ‘and she would have been very aware of the power of ancestral collections, and how the gravitas of those objects helps to convey that she is the right person for this role’. Additionally, Marie Antoinette often incorporated her own family heritage into her spaces; most notably by decorating with Japanese lacquer boxes given to her by her mother, Empress Maria Theresa of Austria.
Most of us don’t have rooms filled with museum-worthy heirlooms to choose from (très tragique), but many of us do have pieces here-and-there that help give our homes a sense of who we are and where we come from. Family photographs, ceramics from your parents’ trip to Tehran in the ‘60s, your grandmother’s cross-stitched tablecloths, your great-grandfather’s parqueted cigar box: things that show that your existence and the existence of your spaces and taste didn’t just occur in a vacuum without reason.
Incorporate Nature
Her spaces also teach us about the visual balance that comes from incorporating naturalistic elements into our interiors. The style of Louis XVI and his queen was a softer interpretation of neoclassicism, recognisable in its fluted legs, straight lines, references to antiquity and the incorporation of Enlightenment ideas of organised nature. Organic elements taken from nature such as flowers and foliage that were arranged into intricate garlands and rinceaux, rather than in the wild and fanciful manner of the Rococo. This blend of lines and fluidity resulted in an aesthetically pleasing sense of order with a sprinkling of whimsy. One such example is Marie Antoinette’s armchair from Saint-Cloud, whose linear form resembles ionic columns, softened by the upholstery’s orderly, pastel sprigs of flowers and intertwining vines.
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The interior designers of today often encourage us to incorporate natural materials when we can; sisal rugs and wooden panels can add warmth to and be appropriate within even the most modern of spaces. Marie Antoinette often used animal prints and bucolic toile de Jouy to add a naturalistic element to her spaces (also on display at the exhibition), as well as marble or other rich stones (shown on display in the form of a perfume burner from The Wallace Collection)—all materials we can easily use today.
And don’t forget to add your personal touch
Lastly, Marie Antoinette teaches us to always add personal touches to our homes. ‘The textiles used in her interiors were commissioned from the royal factories, and often embroidered over by the queen herself,’ shares Macnaughton. Though she was certainly affiliated with royal workshops such as Savonnerie and Gobelins, and guilds like the silk manufacturers in Lyon, many of the pieces were finished by Marie Antoinette herself.
Like most members of high society at the time, Marie Antoinette would have had a signature and recognisable scent that wafted through their private spaces via perfume burners and oil-dipped porcelain flowers. The exhibition allows us to get a whiff of eighteenth-century courtly life via smelling stations ranging from Marie Antoinette’s cosmetics (rosy and powdery) to the jail in which she was detained (urine-tinged with notes of mould), further adding to the humanisation of such a mythicised historical figure.
We aren’t suggesting that you need to suddenly take up a decorative craft and become suspiciously good at it overnight, but consider how your spaces can reflect who you are. Go ahead and buy those expensive, lacquered side tables; but then also place your worn and beloved collection of papier-mâché snuff boxes and that clay ashtray you made for your mum in 1995 on top of it. The most intriguing spaces are never cookie-cutter, after all—especially spaces fit for a queen.
