Why Marie Antoinette Is Spring Fashion’s Main Character

Forget about quiet luxury. The style icon of spring 2026 is Marie Antoinette, who’s back in vogue 20 years after the Sofia Coppola biopic that put the queen of frivolity and excess firmly on the pop culture radar.

Corsets, crinolines and rococo motifs were all over the runways this season, with designers from Jonathan Anderson at Dior to Junya Watanabe bringing their twist to the 18^th century’s maximalist fashions. 

The trend coincides with a raft of exhibitions that kicked off last fall at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London with “Marie Antoinette Style,” a show that explored the French regent’s forward-thinking ideas about fashion and her enduring influence on designers through the centuries.

In Paris, visitors to the Palais Galliera fashion museum can marvel at Marie Antoinette’s corset, with its eye-popping 20.5-inch waist, alongside contemporary designs by the likes of Karl Lagerfeld, John Galliano and Vivienne Westwood in its latest show, “Fashion in the 18th Century: A Fantasized Legacy.”

The exhibition is running in tandem with “Revealing Femininity: Fashion and Appearances in the 18^th Century” at the Musée Cognacq-Jay across town.

The Musée des Arts Décoratifs, in turn, reveals the inner workings of an aristocratic residence in “A Day in the 18th Century: Chronicle of a Parisian Townhouse,” complete with evocative scents custom-created by Givaudan perfumer Daniela Andrier. Meanwhile, the Palace of Versailles is planning an exhibition around Coppola’s “Marie Antoinette” film in the fall.

With all this froth and femininity in the air, it’s no wonder creative directors are trading camel coats for pastel petticoats.

British-American designer Harris Reed was only 10 when “Marie Antoinette” was released, but he describes it as a formative moment. “I watched that probably every Sunday with my mom, because it was just great — also, Kirsten Dunst is the ultimate icon,” he says. 

Known for his genderfluid creations, Reed soaked up the exhibition at the V&A and channeled its spirit in his last collection for French fashion house Nina Ricci, which was laced with historical references, from moiré corsets to ruffled cage skirts, paired with pointy jacquard pumps adorned with jeweled buckles. 

“What I really enjoy about that period, from a visual standpoint, is the fact that it was maximalism at its finest — the way, especially, that the men would showcase color, texture, bedazzlement and jewels,” he says.

Harris sees 18th-century style as an antidote to a flood of fast fashion and quiet luxury. “Personality is coming back,” he declares. “I really love this idea of clothing taking up space.”

The Pleasure Principle

For Ariane James-Sarazin, chief heritage curator responsible for the 17th- and 18th-century collections at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, it’s no coincidence that the Age of Enlightenment is back in focus.

“We’re looking to the past to try to make sense of this crazy world we live in,” she says, noting that history can shed light on questions about the environment, democracy and the place of women and minorities in society. “All these topics we’re wrestling with today first emerged and were debated in the 18^th century.”

The period also acts as a magnet for our fantasies, with an exuberance that has rarely been matched. “It was a hedonistic century that put a strong emphasis on pleasure and feelings, and we need that as well. We all crave a little beauty, something to heal our wounds,” James-Sarazin argues.

The Musée des Arts Décoratifs exhibition includes two of its recent acquisitions: a pair of green silk damask shoes with matching overshoes, which ladies would wear to tiptoe across cobbled courtyards to their horse-drawn coach, and a straw shepherdess hat with silk bows — a style popularized by Marie Antoinette in the 1770s. 

Pascale Gorguet Ballesteros, head of collections for clothes from the 17^th and 18^th century and dolls at Palais Galliera, notes that few court dresses from the period survive today, since they were traditionally handed down. “At the end of the year, aristocrats would give away their clothes to the staff,” she explains. 

That makes Marie Antoinette’s sea green taffeta boneless corset all the more precious. Acquired by the museum in 1997, its tiny waist, cleavage-revealing neckline and backward-tilted armholes imposed a stiff, artificial posture.

“We know it’s a corset for a court dress, probably dating from between 1775 and 1780, and therefore would have been worn by a young Marie Antoinette,” says Gorguet Ballesteros, noting it’s only the second time the museum has displayed the piece. “It probably won’t be shown again, because it’s extremely fragile.”

Among the other items on display is a dainty brown leather shoe that Marie Antoinette is said to have lost as she was climbing up to the guillotine. But the bulk of the exhibition is dedicated to the way the 18^th century has inspired fashion design ever since.

“It’s a joyful century, and it’s a fascinating century for designers, too, because it switches between nature and artifice, between states of undress and dress — which puts seduction center stage, and subliminally raises the issues of sexuality, eroticism and libertinage, without any form of judgment,” the curator says.

“In the 18th century, men wore the same colors as women. They had pastel-colored outfits that were highly colorful and embellished, and gender coding in clothing was non-existent. People simply liked embroidery and dressing up and wearing pink, and that was that,” Gorguet Ballesteros adds.

The final room shows how the Marie Antoinette effect has reverberated through popular culture, from magazine shoots of Mariah Carey, Lady Gaga and Dunst cosplaying as the queen, to Madonna at the 1990 MTV Awards, or a more recent portrait of drag queen Utica, which is featured on the exhibition poster.

Gorguet Ballesteros also links the current fixation on the 18th century to the pervasive anxiety induced by doomscrolling through endless headlines about geopolitical conflict and economic gloom.

“There is a form of lightness and beauty in the 18^th century, and all these colors and embroidery are visually enchanting. Beauty relieves stress. That’s one of the reasons people throng to museums,” she says. “Since couturiers are like sponges, they always have this capacity, like artists, to capture what is in the air.”

A Fantastical Vision

Japanese designer Ken Okada says her lifelong fascination with Marie Antoinette is one of the reasons she moved to France, so it made sense to celebrate the 25^th anniversary of her Okada Paris brand with a collection that pays tribute to both the French queen and Japanese heroine Princess Mononoke.

“I didn’t just want to just copy Marie Antoinette. She’s an influence, an inspiration, but the Okada Paris brand is rooted in a dialogue between Japan and Paris, so even if I love a corset, I’m not going to just cut-and-paste. There are two or three in the collection, but it’s my take on a corset, not a period reproduction,” she says.

This mirrors the way each designer has brought their own stamp to the theme.

In his spring 2026 collection for Dior, Anderson honed in on cage-like skirt constructions, dainty floral motifs and graphic black hats that read like a cross between a tricorne and a nun’s wimple. Antonio Marras leaned into floral-embroidered netting, sherbet hues and giant tulle ball skirts, while Dilara Findikoglu gave her corset dresses a shipwrecked look.

The Palais Galliera exhibition amply illustrates this diversity of interpretations.

An embroidered blue frock coat from Nicolas Ghesquière’s spring 2018 collection for Louis Vuitton is displayed next to a coat worn by Claude Lamoral II, Prince of Ligne, in the 1700s, the better to highlight their uncanny resemblance — though on the runway, Ghesquière famously paired his version with silky running shorts and sneakers.

Pointing out the dramatic train of Ralph Rucci’s Watteau Infanta haute couture dress from fall 2019, Gorguet Ballesteros notes that it reflects his love of architectural volume and contemporary art, while echoing the mourning clothes worn at the Court of Versailles.

The Dior designs included in the show range from a 1954 evening coat designed by founder Christian Dior that is made with an original 18^th century blue brocade, to a 2014 evening gown by Raf Simons that offers an abstracted take on historical dress codes, via exaggerated hip volumes.

“It’s a clear reference to the 18th century, but this silhouette never existed in the 18th century,” the curator says. “It’s a total fantasy.”

And that is the point for many designers using the 18^th century as a touchpoint today.

“For me, there’s a craving for enlightenment, escapism and fantasy,” says Reed.

“We’re in a very male-dominated space right now in the world politically, and I think there’s a lot of toxic masculinity that’s finding its way in,” he muses. “I feel like we’re all subconsciously going toward the hyper feminine, or toward this kind of feminine energy that’s just been kind of lost.”