Marie Antoinette (2022) Costume Review

As you might guess, I have a LOT of thoughts about the plot and costumes of Marie Antoinette (2022), the Canal+ series about the famed 18th-century French queen that’s just now airing in the U.S. on PBS. Created and written by Deborah Davis, who wrote The Favourite (2018), the series attempts to show the real story in a specifically feminist lens. You KNOW I needed to be all over it, given how much the 18th century and Marie Antoinette specifically is my jam. That’s why I’ve done one post on the hair, and have another one over here — but in this post, I’m going to talk about the plot and the costumes (minus the hair)!

Once again, I’ve already watched the whole series, so if you’re worried about spoilers, save this post to read later!

 

Marie Antoinette: The Costumes

The costumes were designed by two people: Madeleine Fontaine (Versailles, Casanova, A Very Long Engagement) was the costume artistic director, while Marie Frémont (costume supervisor on Versailles and The Last Duel) was the official costume designer.

Frémont told Women’s Wear Daily,

“We also wanted to keep it quite historical because sometimes when you want to modernize, you see the show a few years later and it can be seen as dated” (Emilia Schüle, Marie Frémont Talk Making ‘Marie Antoinette’ Their Own).

And according to that publication,

“Frémont looked to the writings of Marie Antoinette’s lady-in-waiting Jeanne Louise Henriette Campan, and plumbed the depths of Paris’ fashion museum Palais Galliera. It holds more than 1,600 garments from the century, which gave Frémont new ideas on fabrics, dyes and textiles. She kept the historic codes while adding in lighter materials, exploring leaner silhouettes and brighter colors.”

And Variety writes,

“Fremont’s team faced a shortage of period costumes in France because of the large number of dramas currently in production, so they searched for fabrics in Italy, England and Spain. The fabrics were then dyed to create a wide-ranging palette of colors and fake embroideries were applied by hand” (A Fresh Take on ‘Marie-Antoinette’: On Set of the Dazzling New Costume Drama).

In the very early scenes in Austria, Marie Antoinette wears a short jacket with petticoat over paniers:

A big deal is made of getting her ready for French manners and style, and she’s sent off to France in this robe à la française:

It has the lace sleeves of French court dress, which weren’t generally worn with the française, but they’re trying to emphasize the gown’s formality. The problem is they’ve misinterpreted the lace band frequently worn for formalwear in this period:

And turned it into a part of the gown, thereby giving Marie Antoinette cold shoulders:

Side note, the gowns are of course worn over the proper silhouette of stays and paniers … or maybe not so “of course”! Women’s Wear Daily reports,

“Frémont lobbied to keep the tight corset. ‘I fought for it because I think the lines of the 18th century need to be carried. Of course we used more modern fabrics to make it a little bit more comfortable,’ she said. Marie Antoinette was required to wear a more rigid version called the grand corps, which was considered an honor at the time not bestowed on lower women of the court, but she complained about in private letters written at the time. Frémont did decide to forgo this strict shape and use a standard corset” (Emilia Schüle, Marie Frémont Talk Making ‘Marie Antoinette’ Their Own).

And there was, of course, predictable corset whining from Schüle:

“I was so happy the day we stopped filming that I wouldn’t have to wear those corsets again” (Emilia Schüle, Marie Frémont Talk Making ‘Marie Antoinette’ Their Own).

“It was great preparation, because you really suffer. They’re very oppressive” (Secrets from the Set: Marie Antoinette).

“Corsets are really a means to suppress women. It just takes ages to get dressed, and you need people to help you, so you’re so dependent on other people. Everything is harder, and you can’t breathe properly. I had to change how I ate, eating less but more often, just so I wouldn’t get sick. It’s really depressing, in a way” (How ‘Marie Antoinette’ sought humanity, humility inside Versailles’ Hall of Mirrors).

Back to the series: Marie Antoinette formally arrives at Versailles in her Cinderella dress, then gets married in a silver robe à la française, which was pretty and looked formal, although it wasn’t the actual court dress she actually wore. On that decision, the Tatler reports,

“Marie Antoinette’s wedding dress, which costume designer Marie explains, ‘we chose for it not to be as big as it was in reality, because we thought that for our modern eyes it would be too much’” (Dressing Marie Antoinette: costume designers behind the lavish new series share their style secrets).

After that, there’s a whole lot of robes à la française and their shortened jacket versions, pet-en-l’airs:

Which makes it ridiculous when the Comtesse de Noailles tells MA that she must wear the robe à la française and MA and Lamballe both act horrified. They’re already wearing the style!

If you feel like you’ve seen a LOT of blue, that’s because you’re right. Everyone is given a color story, a conscious choice by the designers, and Marie-Antoinette’s is blue. Transitioning to the Comtesse du Barry, who is Marie Antoinette’s chief rival at court, suddenly it’s all pink and red:

I was mostly okay with this, except when it came to the Comte de Provence, Louis’s younger brother, who here is presented as petulant and scheming. He’s in ENDLESS green, so much so that I felt like I was looking at the same outfit over and over. His wife is in greenish yellow.

Speaking of men, I’d say their costumes were relatively well done. Louis XV is in darker blue:

His coats are longer and fuller than his son’s, who is in lighter blues:

There’s some definite wobbles — the Cinderella arrival dress for one, plus at one point there’s an “English” fete that’s clearly meant to be ye oldey timey, but all the royals are suddenly dressed in costumes from Outlander:

Two dresses stand out because they were designed by Dior. According to Women’s Wear Daily,

“That collaboration came about when Frémont and Schüle were discussing scenes during one of their many long fittings, and decided that the Parisian occasions called for special gowns” (Emilia Schüle, Marie Frémont Talk Making ‘Marie Antoinette’ Their Own).

These two dresses were consciously meant to be different:

“Speaking about Dior, the designers explain that the two dresses crafted for Emilia were ‘more fantasy and less period’. The Dior dresses, one of which is a pastel blue dress at the beginning of the series on the protagonist’s first visit to Versailles [note: at first I thought this explained the weird Cinderella dress, but other articles have said its the dress from when she goes on her first ceremonial visit to Paris, so now I’m not sure], and the other of which is a beautiful, flamboyant white number, came from the a mix of Maria Grazia Chiuri and Dior heritage” (Dressing Marie Antoinette: costume designers behind the lavish new series share their style secrets).

So that’s definitely this pretty but weird take on a chemise à la reine (maybe?) with exposed boning:

And then either this dress, which I previously analyzed at length:

Or this one:

She also does this VERY 1950s take on an 18th-century dress, which I’m surprised to discover ISN’T a Dior since it’s so different from most everything else in the series:

Marie-Antoinette gradually transitions into wearing fitted-back robes à l’anglaise, particularly as she becomes queen:

Except, when Marie Antoinette is pregnant, they give her a high-waisted proto-Regency dress that, NO. They did NOT have friendly maternity clothes like this.

What they DID have was gowns with extra lacing, and robes à la française worn more loosely to accommodate their bellies:

Near the end of the series (1784-ish), Marie-Antoinette transitions to this fitted robe à l’anglaise that has some of the simplicity of the famous chemise à la reine:

Lamballe is mostly in yellows and occasional pinks:

For the boys, the Duc de Chartres is the best dressed:

I have a MASSIVE crush on Marie Antoinette’s brother, the Emperor Joseph:

And Fersen wears various dark suits and a military uniform:

 

 

Marie Antoinette: The Plot

Now, the ramblings and the rantings! Overall, I actively enjoyed watching this. The costumes were reasonably well done and pretty, the hair was well executed and gave me some things to be annoyed about, and I’m always interested in Marie Antoinette as a person and 18th-century France in general.

Most importantly, the show gave me a number of opportunities to yell “MOPS!”

That being said … Yes, Marie Antoinette had her teeth fixed before leaving for Versailles, but I doubt it was some kind of Texas Chainsaw Dental Horror Show:

The idea that du Barry would TART UP THE DAUPHINE ON HER WEDDING NIGHT, adding all kinds of slutty eye makeup including EYELINER and darkening her lip and cheek rouge, was RIDICULOUS:

Furthermore, the idea that du Barry would go on to have MULTIPLE ONGOING SEDUCTION CLASSES with the dauphine was, NO. Yes, Marie-Antoinette didn’t really understand what a mistress was, and for sure a royal mistress, when she first arrived at Versailles. But she NEVER hung with du Barry, didn’t like her because of du Barry’s low-class origins, and du Barry would NOT have been put in the position of giving courtesan-ing lessons to the highest ranking woman in the country. (And did anyone else roll their eyes when du Barry screamed out “FRANCE!” as a means of calling for Louis XV’s attention?)

I liked watching Louis and Marie-Antoinette’s relationship develop. I felt like this was a reasonable take on how things would have gone with them, and I liked that they emphasized that the two eventually had a loving relationship, even if it wasn’t a Sparks Flying True Love Passionate bond. That being said, the idea that MA would MOVE OUT OF VERSAILLES and into the Petit Trianon because she’s pissed? NO. Yes, she spent a lot of time there, even sleeping there several nights in a row. But she never MOVED OUT OF VERSAILLES PROPER. PLEASE. I think that was all part of their attempt to make Marie-Antoinette a proto-feminist, which is just totally anachronistic (read more at Smithsonian).

I liked how much the show’s characters focused on internal court bickering and jockeying, although as always I wonder if audiences that don’t know a lot about the period will understand how much the royals and courtiers were out of touch with what was going on politically/economically outside of Versailles. I also wasn’t too sure about making the Comte and Comtesse de Provence the main enemies of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. The fact that they left out Louis’s youngest brother, the Comte d’Artois, meant they didn’t give audiences a chance to understand how hard it actually WAS for Marie-Antoinette when her sister-in-law (the Comtesse d’Artois) had a baby before her … and Artois was one of the main men Marie-Antoinette was accused of sleeping with, so how’s that going to work?

Vive la Reine on Tumblr has some good rants about all the formal etiquette missing from the show. The characters TALK about how stifling the etiquette was for MA, but the show doesn’t show it, other than a few dressing scenes. The idea that the Comtesse de Noailles, who is constantly screaming at MA about etiquette, would SLAP the DAUPHINE is ludicrous.

The show also went super heavy-handed with the “Style Council.” Yes, MA was a fashion leader and collaborated with Rose Bertin, Léonard, and more. But she didn’t form an official CLUB to do it. And apparently Rose Bertin works out of the attics of the literal chateau of Versailles? Not Paris? Huh?

I enjoyed the sparks with Fersen, although I thought they were awfully slow to build, and how much did they cast this guy because he looks like Jamie Dornan?

And finally, some art snark! I was honestly impressed at how well they mashed up this portrait of MA’s mother, Empress Maria Theresa, with the actress who plays her in the series:

But then as they’re looking for brides for the Comte de Provence, they look at a bunch of portraits including this one:

And then MA sends her mother a portrait of herself, and they use a portrait of the Duchesse de Polignac as the base? Huh?

There will be two more seasons, and you can bet your Mops I’ll be reviewing them! Look out for my second post on the hair and wigs next up.

 

Have you seen any of this Marie Antoinette? What do you think of the costumes and the plot?