"Marie Antoinette: the Fragonard cupcake who bankrupted France with her lust for fashion and diamonds, who bottle-fed pet lambs while her people starved. No matter that, in truth, her frocks and jewels were small fry in her country's financial ruin; the optics, as we would say now, were terrible. So what if she never actually said let them eat cake history is no match for a great soundbite. But while opulence hastened Marie Antoinette's downfall, it has also brought her immortality."
"Even as she was driven to the scaffold, an ignominious jerky ride by open ox cart through crowds of jeering Parisians, the last queen of France knew the power of fashion. Marie Antoinette had worn only black since the death of her husband nine months earlier, defying a Jacobin ban on the wearing of a colour associated with the monarchy."
"Two and a half centuries later, Marie Antoinette still cuts a defiantly glamorous figure in culture, as compelling as she is controversial. Marie Antoinette Style, the first British exhibition devoted to her life and legend, opens at the V&A museum in London on 20 September. Its 250 dazzling pieces include one of her silk slippers, her pearls and diamonds, a dinner service, and the last letter she wrote from the Conciergerie prison before her death at the age of 37."
Marie Antoinette combined extreme opulence with gestures such as bottle-feeding pet lambs while many subjects starved. Her frocks and jewels were minor factors in state finances, but the optics amplified public anger and myth-making like the false 'let them eat cake' soundbite. She used fashion to communicate, choosing a white chemise on the morning of her execution after wearing black during mourning. She was vilified in the press as a whore and child abuser and endured a humiliating cart ride to the scaffold. A V&A exhibition presents 250 items, including jewels, a silk slipper and her last prison letter.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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