But far from feeling like a cop-out, it makes the pieces here that actually belonged to Marie—on the exhibition labels, these are marked with the queen’s distinctive monogram—feel all the more special: a delicate black lace collar, dainty beaded shoes, and two richly embellished fragments of court gowns, designed to sparkle in candlelight. “To have these two surviving samples,” says Grant, “gives you a taste of how exceptional her gowns would have been.”
Beaded slippers belonging to Marie Antoinette.
Photo: Musée Carnavalet / Roger-Viollet
Up next is a deep dive into her jewels. Marie’s personal jewelry was smuggled out of France and kept by her only surviving child, Marie Thérèse, but in “Marie Antoinette Style,” many of these displayed pieces are reuniting with Marie’s own elegant jewelry casket for the first time since her death. You’ll find eye-popping diamonds, brooches, and pendants here, after which we’re taken through galleries examining Marie’s hairdos, the work of her hairdresser Monsieur Léonard and stylist Rose Bertin.
A replica of the necklace from the infamous “Diamond Necklace Affair.”
Photo: Peter Kelleher
There are also bejeweled fans to admire, panels of 18th-century animal print, letters in the queen’s own hand, and a section dedicated to her escape to the Petit Trianon—all floral-printed furniture, porcelain plates, Toile de Jouy, tinkling pianos, and, hilariously, gardening tools that were only used for staged performances of pastoral idylls.
The fans and hairstyles of Marie Antoinette.
Photo: Peter Kelleher
The next section is genius: a chapter devoted to scents, a particular obsession of Marie’s. “Versailles was very fragranced,” explains Grant. “Everybody reported that it smelled bad because so many people were crowded together, and there were things like chamber pots and cesspits, so Marie Antoinette was burning scents in her room and entirely perfumed from head to toe. It was also a way of projecting her allure and status.”
To that end, four faux marble busts are displayed, infused with four fragrances that tell Marie’s story and draw you fully into her world. The first, a mix of beeswax, smoke, oak, and body odor, transport you to a masquerade ball in Versailles’ Hall of Mirrors. The second is orris root, rose, lavender, tuberose, violet, and musk, the aroma of Marie’s own powder and rouge, which takes you directly to her mid-morning dressing table. The third evokes her dreamy garden at the Petit Trianon, with grass, lilac, roses, and honeysuckle.
The four scents which draw you into Marie Antoinette’s world.
Photo: Peter Kelleher
After that, the fourth comes as a shock: mildew, cold stone, sewage, and the polluted Seine, which takes us to Marie Antoinette’s cramped, dank cell. Leaning in to breathe in the fragrance, you can detect a note of juniper amongst the stench—something the queen had asked to be burned to purify the air of her prison. You can almost sense her presence, just out of reach. “We wanted something else to counter all that beauty,” says Grant. “To bring you the reality.”
