A Lasting Reign — Marie Antoinette's Influences on 21st Century Style

Wildfox Couture Fall 2014 Ad Campaign channelling Marie Antoinette

Over two hundred years since her death and Marie Antoinette is as popular as ever—perhaps even more so than when she was alive.

Why is it that we are still obsessed with her? Did Sofia Coppola’s dreamy biopic ask the world to look at Marie Antoinette through rose-colored glasses? Is rococo just back in style? Or is there something about Marie Antoinette—her style, her biography, her personality—that appeals to the modern woman?

First, let’s look back at some of the most memorable Marie Antoinette-inspired fashion moments of the twenty-first century so far.

2000: Christian Dior Haute Couture

A runway look from the Fall 2000 Christian Dior Haute Couture Show

Always one for extravagance, John Galliano did the Marie Antoinette style in wonderful fashion at the fall 2000 haute couture show for Christian Dior. This signature look from the runway show features a model wearing a tall wig decked out in feathers and a modified robe à la française (the style of dress made popular in rococo France) that is as extravagant (if not more) as anything Marie Antoinette ever wore. 

There is a garishness to Galliano's interpretation of Marie Antoinette's style: her skirt is too short, her skin painted as pale as a porcelain doll or a Geisha, the feathers in her hair referencing a dancer. Even for Marie Antoinette the look is extremely over-the-top. So much so that one wonders what Galliano's view on Antoinette is. Is this runway collection a celebration of her exuberant style, a style that goes so hand-in-hand with Galliano's own over-the-top tendencies? Or is this a satirical representation of Antoinette, a political cartoon come to life, mocking her for her decadent lifestyle?

Early 2000s: Harajuku Street Style

"Lolita" harajuku style in Japan

Harajuku street fashion—named so for the Tokyo neighborhood where it originated—became popular in the early 2000s and has remained a fixture of Japanese street fashion. While there are many different variations of the harajuku style, one sub-trend is the "Lolita" style, which features pastel colors, ruffles, lace, and full skirts—styles that closely resemble the outfits worn by Marie Antoinette. 

2006: Marie Antoinette Film

Stills from Marie Antoinette (2006 dir. Sofia Coppola)

Perhaps the biggest influence of the resurgence of the Marie Antoinette image is Sofia Coppola’s 2006 film Marie Antoinette. Aesthetically beautiful, with the color palette of a box of Laduree macarons, Marie Antoinette reads more like a beautiful Tumblr page than a narrative of the complicated life of the Austrian princess turned French queen. Anyone who knows Coppola’s usual dreamy aesthetic would recognize that extreme artistic liberties were taken with the creation of this film, but in some ways the sympathetic view of Antoinette makes it one of the most truthful retellings of her story. She is presented not as a static, extravagant royal with no sense of reality but rather a teenage girl thrust into a complicated world that she has no choice but to adapt.

Marie Antoinette is the film that has educated this generation about the titular character and influenced the millennial crowd’s interpretation of French rococo style.

2009: Juicy Couture "Let Them Eat Couture" Campaign

Advertisements from Juicy Couture featuring extravagant wigs and pastel gowns

My introduction to the world of Marie Antoinette was through a series of advertisements from Juicy Couture. The brand’s preppy punk aesthetic made for a perfect modern reimagining of Marie Antoinette. Women in pastel-colored gowns and mile-high hair (in equally fantastical pastel colors) hung around their tattooed boyfriends while shouting, “Let them eat couture," the tagline of the campaign.

I was fascinated by these cool girls and their crazy hairdos, and I remember seeing a similarly styled woman in one of my history textbooks. I loved the idea of a modern-day Marie Antoinette wearing a contemporary fashion brand like Juicy Couture, and their choice to use Antoinette as an It Girl was an ingenious one. Hey, it got me interested!

2012: Chanel Resort Show at Versailles

Models marching through the gardens of Versailles at the Chanel resort show

In 2012 Karl Lagerfeld sent his all-star posse out to the castle of Versailles, the home of Marie Antoinette in France. Models traipsed through the magnificent gardens, passing classical-inspired fountains and creatively arranged shrubbery. In true Lagerfeld fashion the clothes were both historically inspired and incredibly modern; what Marie Antoinette would wear if she lived in the twenty-first century and sitting in the front row of Paris Fashion Week herself.

2012: Kate Moss Channels Marie Antoinette for Vogue

Kate Moss as a modern-day rococo queen at the Ritz Paris, shot by Tim Walker for Vogue

In celebration of the remodeling of another staple of Parisian history, the Hôtel Ritz, Kate Moss, Tim Walker, and Vogue teamed up for a Marie Antoinette-inspired photo shoot that exudes luxury and style. Moss wore couture dresses and fabulous wigs and hairpieces, and even posed in the Imperial Suite, which is modeled after Antoinette’s very suite at Versailles!

2015: Influences on the Runway

Styles and trends from the time of Marie Antoinette seen at MSGM, Ceéline, Chanel, Christian Dior, and Prada

Even when looking at the latest runway shows for Fall 2015 it is impossible to escape references to Antoinette’s style. From penchants for pastels to structural panniers, it is clear that Marie Antoinette still inspires a whole world with her iconic fashions and her fascinating life.

So why are fashion brands continually inspired by Marie Antoinette?

Sure, the pastels and the ruffles and the adornments might entice the twenty-first century girl at first, for the level of exuberance that Marie Antoinette experienced is greater than anything most girls will ever experience in their lifetimes. If today is all about a fascination with becoming the “one percent” then Marie Antoinette was the one-thousandth of the top one percent. Marie Antoinette serves as both an example of attaining the highest level of wealth (something even better than achieving the American dream) and a cautionary tale of how immense wealth does not protect one from the possibility of an immense downfall.

More than the fact that we are fascinated with the luxurious life of Marie Antoinette and her tragic fall from grace, however, I think that Marie Antoinette and her iconic style have remained fixtures of fashion hundreds of years following her death because we see aspects of the modern woman in her. For many years individuals tended to focus on the more damning aspects of Antoinette’s life—her superfluous lifestyle, her rumored affairs and “deviant” sexual behavior, and her supposed disinterest for the wellbeing of the French people—but finally there is enough distance between then and now that we can reconsider who Marie Antoinette really was and consider the complexities of her life.

She was a young, naïve girl who was thrust into the lion’s den that was the French court at Versailles, forced to leave behind her family, her nationality (Marie Antoinette was born in Austria, the daughter of Holy Roman Empress Maria Theresa), even her dog. Essentially, Marie Antoinette was stripped of her identity and everything she had ever known at the young age of fourteen and forced to reconstruct herself as a French princess. Knowing the intricacies and extreme political nature of the French court you may know how difficult of a task it was for Marie Antoinette to win over the French aristocracy (seriously, Versailles was like Gossip Girl mixed with House of Cards on crack) but she eventually succeeded and some would say even thrived in the French court until her untimely demise. And more importantly, she used style and the rituals of French royal fashion to do so.

It is easy to dismiss Marie Antoinette as a silly, frivolous, airheaded young girl with no ability to effectively rule a country alongside her equally unfit husband, but to survive and thrive at Versailles required a great deal of tact and bravery. Fashion was the tool that helped Antoinette win over her naysayers (while at the same time alienating the lower classes, but that’s another story) but it was her unique personality that made it all happen, and I think that is the part of Marie Antoinette’s story that continues to inspire us.

And hey, she did wear some pretty cute clothes, too. It’s not so strange to want to recreate those!