{"id":437506,"date":"2025-09-20T02:25:11","date_gmt":"2025-09-20T02:25:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/437506\/"},"modified":"2025-09-20T02:25:11","modified_gmt":"2025-09-20T02:25:11","slug":"manolo-blahnik-opens-bittersweet-marie-antoinette-show-at-va-london","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/437506\/","title":{"rendered":"Manolo Blahnik Opens Bittersweet Marie Antoinette Show at V&A London"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tLONDON<\/a><\/strong> \u2014<\/strong> It was Manolo Blahnik\u2019s<\/a> night on Thursday, with a private view of the new Victoria and Albert Museum show, \u201cMarie Antoinette Style,\u201d and a lavish, 18th-century-inspired dinner celebrating the designer\u2019s lifelong affection for the troubled French queen. His company is also the sole sponsor of the show, which opens Saturday and is set to tour America after it wraps up in London in March.<\/p>\n

\n\tBlahnik\u2019s designs \u2014 old and new \u2014 were everywhere.<\/p>\n

\n\tShoes and booties from his new Marie Antoinette capsule collection<\/a> peeked from little green trees and bushes set up in the museum\u2019s big marble hallway. The hand-tufted shoes he created for Sofia Coppola\u2019s 2006 Marie Antoinette film were also on display, alongside the queen\u2019s own silk slippers, jewels from her private collection and intimate items from her toilette case.<\/p>\n

\n\tSo which shoes did Blahnik choose to wear on the big night? \u201cThe comfy ones!\u201d said the dapper designer, referring to the colorful, silk patchwork slip-ons that he paired with a dark suit, bow tie and signature round glasses.<\/p>\n

\n\tBlahnik said he liked the queen\u2019s personal effects in particular, and oohed and ahhed over her S\u00e8vres porcelain tableware from the Petit Trianon. \u201cLook \u2014 there\u2019s not a scratch or a mark on them,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\n\tCharming isn\u2019t the ideal word to describe this show, given the guillotine blade from 1793 that\u2019s on display alongside the wrinkled white cotton chemise the queen donned for her execution. Instead, it\u2019s intimate, bittersweet and shows why Marie Antoinette, despite being so physically small, looms large in history and popular culture.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cLook at the size of her waist in that corset,\u201d marveled Richard E. Grant, pointing to the doll-like mannequin in one of the rooms. He was wandering through the exhibition with fellow guests Sandy Powell, Jasper Conran, Yasmin Le Bon, Tali Lennox and Fran Lebowitz, who\u2019s in the midst of a whistle stop tour of Europe, talking to audiences about society, politics and U.S. President Donald Trump.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"A<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tA look from Manolo Blahnik<\/a>\u2018s Marie Antoinette limited-edition capsule collection.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of Manolo Blahnik<\/a><\/p>\n

\n\tThere are also mile-wide court dresses; a step-by-step look at the queen\u2019s daily toilette, and a replica of the jewels from the Affair of the Diamond Necklace, which saw Marie Antoinette\u2019s reputation damaged by false criminal accusations.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt\u2019s swell. But I don\u2019t think it will catch on,\u201d said Lebowitz of all the corseted styles, bling-y jewels and pouf-y hair on display.<\/p>\n

\n\tLebowitz was wrong. The queen\u2019s style did catch on. One of the rooms is a fashion explosion \u2014 a look at how 20th- and 21st-century designers have drawn inspiration from Marie Antoinette and her style. There are dresses from designers including Karl Lagerfeld, John Galliano for Dior, Erdem Moralioglu and Jeremy Scott for Moschino.<\/p>\n

\n\tChief executive officer Kristina Blahnik<\/a>, who\u2019s been growing the business and working hard to preserve her uncle\u2019s legacy, had pushed for sole sponsorship of the show.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cMarie Antoinette has long been entwined with our family\u2019s imagination,\u201d she told guests who were seated at a long dinner table that was laden with figs, grapes, Austrian artisan bread, sugared almonds and edible swan sculptures made from meringue, chantilly cream and berries. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWhen we first heard that the V&A was mounting a Marie Antoinette exhibition, I made it my life\u2019s mission to ensure that it would be my uncle\u2019s name \u2014 only \u2014 next to Marie Antoinette\u2019s,\u201d said Blahnik who, like the queen herself, stands by her family.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Kristina<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tKristina Blahnik<\/a> and Manolo Blahnik at the private view of Marie Antoinette Style at the V&A.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tWireImage\/Courtesy of Manolo Bla<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LONDON \u2014 It was Manolo Blahnik\u2019s night on Thursday, with a private view of the new Victoria and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":437507,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7757],"tags":[748,393,4884,148191,257,25465,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-437506","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-london","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-england","10":"tag-great-britain","11":"tag-kristina-blahnik","12":"tag-london","13":"tag-manolo-blahnik","14":"tag-uk","15":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115234257409144886","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/437506","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=437506"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/437506\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/437507"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=437506"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=437506"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=437506"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}