← If Jewels Could Talk with Carol Woolton
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- [00:01]
Carol Woolton
This episode is brought to you by Leibish coloured diamond specialists. Did you know that only one stone in 10,000 discovered is a colored diamond?
- [00:19]
Dr. Sarah Grant
She is this perfect storm of sort of, you know, fascinating, attractive and fashionable person combined with these, you know, create tragic life story. And then also it's that sort of.
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Carol Woolton
You have to have that trick tragedy mixed in with it to make somebody iconic in the future. It's sort of the Princess Diana factor, isn't it? Really?
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Dr. Sarah Grant
It is. And they were almost the same age. I think Princess Diana was 36 when she died and married 37.
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Carol Woolton
Yes, yes. I'm Carol Houlton, the voice of jewelry. Welcome to if Jules Could Talk. I'm an author and broadcaster and the woman who initiated the role of jewellery editor at magazines like Tatler and Vogue. This is a podcast for everyone, for people who do like jewellery, for people who don't realize they like jewellery, and anyone intrigued by fascinating facts, new ideas and forgotten histories. So join me as I tell sparkly tales and meet all sorts of people delving into four centuries of jewellery culture and investigate what's happening now. Today, we're talking about the most fashionable queen in history, Maureen Toinette, whose glamour and dazzling diamond style has continued to have an iconic appeal through the generations. And keep listening because this is the first episode of two. Next we're going to talk in depth about the affair of the diamond necklace, the scandal that precipitated the downfall of the French monarchy. I am delighted to be here this morning talking with Dr. Sarah Grant, the senior curator at the VA Museum in London. And she is the curator of a landmark exhibition called Murray Antoinette Style, which is the first major exhibition to be held in the uk, dedicated to the Queen's enduring influence on fashion, interiors, design and popular culture. And it explores and defines Marie Antoinette's enduring legacy. Sarah says in the catalogue the rare combination of glamour, spectacle and tragedy she represents remains as intoxicating today as. As it was in the 18th century. Sarah, thank you very much for joining us.
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Dr. Sarah Grant
Thank you for having me.
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Carol Woolton
Has Marie Antoinette long been a figure that you have wanted to look into? Have you been slightly obsessed by her for many years?
- [03:01]
Dr. Sarah Grant
I wouldn't say obsessed, but she is someone I wanted to focus on for a long time in an exhibition. And given that there had never been an exhibition, as you said, in this country, country, on her, which, which surprised me because we have so many of her objects in collections across the uk, I, I felt that sort of the time, the time was right, I mean, actually things like the jewelry sales that Came up, you know, with the jewels from her collections, showed the kind of continuing interest in her as well. And it just seemed like the right time to explore her as an early modern fashion and style icon, as someone whose style has never gone out of. Of fashion. And so because we have at the VA a very important portrait of her. We have some of her porcelain, we have some of her furniture, and then we have the other collections to support it, like the 18th century French dress and textiles that we could show. And also importantly, jewels as well, because jewels are such a key part of her look, her sort of aesthetic and her style too.
- [03:59]
Carol Woolton
And to you, she was the most stylish French queen of all time?
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Dr. Sarah Grant
Absolutely, yes, absolutely. Unequivocally. I mean, she. So her first maid of the bedchamber said all wished instantly to have the same dress as the queen. You know, she's acknowledged in her own time as being this hugely fashionable figure. And everybody is scrutinizing what she's wearing. They're reporting on what she's wearing. It goes as far as North America in the newspapers. People go to Versailles to see what she's wearing. Her wardrobe can be viewed. It is a royal chattel and people can go and see it. And she herself says that she loves and is interested in fashion. She said, it is true that I do take a little care in my adornment. So she loved fashion. She becomes this figure in fashion plates. And it is a time obviously when Paris and Versailles are also the center for fashion in Europe. And so all the trades that support fashion are beginning to professionalize. You have the beginning of the fashion press. The first fashion magazines are coming out at the same time. So all that comes together with the pace and the acceleration of fashion. So fashions are changing weekly. And Marie Antoinette reflects that she moves away from the more rigid, the more formal, the sort of more old fashioned court dress. And she embraces sort of younger and more fashionable styles. And she helps to change fashions.
- [05:21]
Carol Woolton
So that's interesting. Fashion changes every week. And we talk about fast fashion now.
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Dr. Sarah Grant
We do.
- [05:27]
Carol Woolton
She was ahead of the game.
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Dr. Sarah Grant
Yes.
- [05:29]
Carol Woolton
What I want to was, could you just set the scene of what they were wearing before Marie Antoinette arrived at court? So we then get a sense of how much she changed it.
- [05:40]
Dr. Sarah Grant
You get this sort of lingering rococo basically. And it's a fairly conservative type of court dress. And the queen before her is Mary Lewiska, who was Polish originally, who comes to Mary Louis, the 15th. She was a very conservative, very pious woman. She had 10 children. She was very Much in the background of Versailles, you know, she wasn't trying at all to compete with the King in terms of attention. And of course, he has his, his notorious mistresses as well, Madame de Pompadour and Madame du Barry, who are much more sort of eye catching and fashionable. So court dress, it doesn't evolve as quickly as it does under Marie Antoinette. It is much more slow to sort of evolve and change. And actually that is really illustrated in this inventory from 1771, which has some of the previous queen's wardrobe and Marie Antoinette's wardrobe were inventoried together. So you can see that the styles have not really changed very much in sort of decades, you know, and you look at portraits and again, not very much changes, but essentially she's wearing various sort of floral, highly figured sort of silks that have a lot of metal thread, they're very heavy and a lot of lace. And the hairstyles were much lower. They're sort of very close to the head. Lots of jewels. I mean, she wears a huge amount of jewels, you can see those in her portraits. But yes, nothing really changes, particularly during her reign. And so then when Marie Antoinette arrives and she's very young, you know, she's 14, obviously, when she arrives, when she's Dauphine, which is incredibly young, she's 18 when she becomes queen. So she expects experiences her first decade as queen as a teenager and then a young woman in her 20s. So that is definitely a contributing factor. And she is surrounded by this kind of teenage coterie. The royal family are sort of very young. So she is clearly, as someone who is also very confident and very charismatic. And everybody says that about her. They say she's hugely charming. Her brother writes this wonderful letter describing her when he sees her again. He hasn't seen her since she was 14 and he, he sees her at 21 and he says, you know, she's really captivating and lively and intelligent. So I think because she had that character, she was someone who was interested in fashions and novelty and then she.
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Carol Woolton
Could take other people with her.
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Dr. Sarah Grant
Yes.
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Carol Woolton
So her first impression on the French court would have been on her wedding day in 1770, and that's when she would have made her first fashion impression. And you have a dress in, in the exhibition that's very similar to what she wore at her wedding.
- [08:17]
Dr. Sarah Grant
Yes, and these. And that is the classic example of the really rigid kind of etiquette that existed at court in terms of dress that you had to wear the grand navy, which was the kind of the most formal type of Court gown, which Marien Jeannette hated and which she. She begged Louis XVI to retire or at least kind of to soften and make more easier to wear. And essentially it is a very stiff whale boned bodice, incredibly tight. And then you wear a huge sort of petticoat it was called. And all of this was in metal, you know, metal, woven metal thread, cloth, silver cloth, which is woven from silver, so very heavy. And then you wear a train which hooks on the back with these large, really large metal hooks, almost like you're towing, you know, sort of something behind you. And so she was required to wear that not just for her wedding. And we have the beautiful example in our exhibition of one of the only surviving 18th century French silver wedding gowns that was actually worn by the future Queen of Sweden, but which gives you a sense of just the opulence and.
- [09:16]
Carol Woolton
The sparkle and also how tiny they were because they were children.
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Dr. Sarah Grant
The waist is minuscule, absolutely minuscule. And her mother says so. Her mother, Maria Theresa, Empress of Austria, says, I know that the bodices in France are incredibly tight. Would you like me to send you some from Austria? Because they're softer and they're not as uncomfortable. And there is an account of Marie Antoinette rushing back to her private rooms and she would immediately unhook the train and sort of loosen the bodice. And obviously you wear those with the very wide pannier. So that was another sort of part of the court protocols that you had different widths of panniers. So you have the very, very wide ones for more formal ceremonial occasions. And then they get smaller and smaller or narrower and narrower, depending on the occasion. But so, yes, so the wedding gown gives a sense of the opulence of the most formal type of gown that you wore, which she wore regularly. And she would have her diamonds sewn to the bodice and she would wear her diamonds in her hair as well. And they also held up the sides of the skirt of the gown too. So in addition to all that sparkling silver that you see in the exhibition, you have the additional layer of all the jewels on top too.
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Carol Woolton
And did she also have jewels sewn to the back of her shoes? They're not really shoes, are they? Because they're the little slippers and the mule. The little slippers.
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Dr. Sarah Grant
She did. I mean, she had actually, funnily enough, there's an inventory since 1795 which mentions amazing diamond shoe buckles. And I think it's a set of shoe buckles, a pair of shoe buckles. That's the most, the most Valuable in that one. So yes, she wore her diamond shoe buckles as well. Diamonds in her hair. You know, when she wasn't wearing the formal court dress, she was wearing them in her bonnets as well and her hats, earrings obviously. And they're all, as you know, she has her personal jewels and then she has the crown jewels that she can borrow, which the receipt had to be signed for as well when she borrowed them. And they came from Paris because they're kept in the Gare de Merle. But she kept her own jewels in her personal jewelry chest in her bedroom.
- [11:13]
Carol Woolton
And you have the chest in the exhibition?
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Dr. Sarah Grant
We do, yeah. I mean it was a gift from Louis xv, so from her grandfather in law, essentially the then reigning king, he gave it to her as a wedding present. This beautiful little jewelry chest with the sev porcelain plaques and amazing kind of gilt bronze mounts. And there's even the. The lining is lined with this beautiful pale green velvet. And then you could pull out a little ledge so she could write a little letter, you know, putting on your jewels and maybe you're writing a little letter, I don't know.
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Carol Woolton
And it took a long time to put the jewels on. So she had time to write a letter.
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Dr. Sarah Grant
It did. And actually. And she has someone employed in her wardrobe and the list of wardrobe members, there are several. Someone who's employed just to sew jewels onto her. And there is someone employed just to thread and rethread pearls as well. And then there's a separate person who was employed just to clean her diamonds and her other sort of stones. And so it's fascinating the whole kind of the sort of system that grows up around the jewels and supporting the wearing of jewels and all those things. And the other amazing gift that he gave Henry the 15th was a diamond encrusted fan as well. So that was another present he gave her as well as a beautiful set of bracelets with her monogram and the bracelet clasp. And we have a pair in the exhibition that's almost identical to those.
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Carol Woolton
So how did she begin to change the older fashioned look of court and start impress her own style in what she wore?
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Dr. Sarah Grant
It's a combination, isn't it? Because it's a combination of wanting to change these styles that are outdated and seen sort of aging to her and sort of old to her and old fashioned and which she associates with the older generation who are still there at court, like the Royal aunts, Louis XVI's aunts, you know, who are very kind of prominent. So it's a combination of Wanting to change styles and update them and make them more fashionable. And the fact that she's young and then it's also trying to let go of that etiquette and that protocol, you know, the protocol that surrounded getting dressed and having her toilette performed in public and wearing these outdated styles that had been established by Louis XIV so over 100 years before. So I think it's both those things. And then of course, she encounters other fashionable people at court, like the Duchesse de Chartres, who was married to the pretender to the throne, the future Duke d' Orleans and the Princess de Lamballe and the Duchesse de Polignac, her friends who are also very interested in fashion too. And it's the Princess Lamballe and the Duchesse de Chartres who introduced her to Rose Bertin, who is the famous Marchandemerge. So there are other fashionable people at court and in her circle. And so clearly it is a sort of a group kind of activity. But it's definitely the Queen who is launching trends together with the help of Marchandemerge and other people in her circle.
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Carol Woolton
Do you think she had an image of what she wanted to look like, not just to change from the old fashioned style, but do you think she had an image in her head of what she wanted to be?
- [14:08]
Dr. Sarah Grant
Well, I don't know, because when she, even before she leaves Vienna, she is supposed to assume the guise or the appearance of a French princess. And she's sent a French hairdresser and she sent a French dentist to Vienna so that even before she leaves, she can start to sort of appear French. And her mother orders her entire trousseau from Paris. You know, her wedding gown comes from Paris. So she's already. And she's wearing French silks in Vienna as well. So she's already, you know, sort of trying to be French. That was a very important part of the assimilation at court, was not to appear foreign and to appear as French as possible in terms of her ideas of what she wanted to appear. I think she was just open to kind of new ideas and new creations. She's very open to, for instance, English fashions, which became very, very fashionable at the time and were a symbol of modernity, because English women, and in particular women in London were seen as having a particular independence. And London was the most modern city in Europe at the time.
- [15:09]
Carol Woolton
I was interested by her interest in English fashion because that kind of endeared her to the French court.
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Dr. Sarah Grant
Well, they were all interested in England actually.
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Carol Woolton
Were they?
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Dr. Sarah Grant
Yes. So Louis xvi, he speaks fluent English. And his master of the wardrobe sent his son over almost like a gap year to England to kind of travel around England. And then when there was, you know, time, peace, and around 1787, a lot of the French court people who were allowed to travel went to England and looked at the country houses and spent time in London and visited various places like Bath and York and other places. So there was a huge interest in England at the time.
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Carol Woolton
So she turned to the Rose Batin. And can you describe a little? I mean, I suppose the fast track way to describe Rose Batin is to say she was one of the first couturiers.
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Dr. Sarah Grant
Yes, she's a stylist. Couture. I mean, they don't make anything. So the national de Merges don't make anything, but they marshal sort of the different aspects of the dress to create the whole sort of, you know, the whole guise or the whole sort of overall look. So they sell trimmings, you know, like ribbons and other things, but they don't sell gowns. Essentially. They are the ones who sort of mastermind the. Over the overall look. And then it's sort of, you know, they. They work with seamstresses and other people who do all that.
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Carol Woolton
So she'd choose fabrics. Would she show Marie Antoinette these fabrics and the trimmings?
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Dr. Sarah Grant
Yes. And then together they would sort of confect something and then give it an elaborate title or a really whimsical sort of title.
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Carol Woolton
Like what?
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Dr. Sarah Grant
Oh, gosh. I mean, I'm just thinking about some of these pouf, you know, that she worked together with the Queen's hairdressers to create these special kind of headdresses that were. Went on. On top of their hair. And they had these extraordinary names like, you know, pouff, Fella, Sentiment and kind of, you know, and named after things like inoculations against smallpox and naval victories and, you know, think it's a very intellectual type of fashion. I think I can't see many sort of young, fashionable people today being inspired by those sorts of events. And they're often commemorating sort of French, you know, important French events.
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Carol Woolton
And the colors as well. Didn't they have extra extraordinary titles, like sort of the Dauphin Poo or something like that?
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Dr. Sarah Grant
Yes, exactly. Yeah, exactly. And they have. One of the other ones I love is Nymph's thighs as well. So the color of a nymph's thighs. And then Opal's Despair is another one which I've always really liked. I think that's very romantic, very popular. There's another one as well. That's London chimney soot and that's supposed to be the color that she's wearing in the famous portrait with the Rose. She's wearing that supply steel blue grey gown. And that's supposed to be London chimney soot. And then there was another one that was called Paris Mud as well, which was sort of, again, this sort of greeny brownie sort of, you know, like river banky Seine kind of river mud. Yes.
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Carol Woolton
So wonderful colours, very descriptive. So Rose would get all this together, the colors, the fabrics, the trimmings, they would create something. And then was Rose instrumental in bringing in the hairdresser and the other parts to pull this together, to pull the look together?
- [18:20]
Dr. Sarah Grant
Yes. I mean, she has a higher status than the hairdressers. For instance, Marinette was sent a hairdresser called Lacheneur who went to Vienna, as I mentioned. And then when she arrives in France, she has another hairdresser mainly called Legue. And actually Leonard, who's the famous one, he works under him. So he's actually not even her senior hairdresser at that time. And he doesn't become her main hairdresser until the 1780s. But he is named often in some of the fashion plates. When you look at the fashion plates, it will sometimes say hairstyle designed by Leonard. So yes, so Rose Martin will coordinate all of that. But you know, other people also take credit for Marie Antoinette style, like her artist Vigilau Prince, the portrait painter. She says, you know, I was responsible for styling the queen in her portraits. And she says, I made her wear her hair like this and I draped the gown like this, you know, so there are a number of other people who are also in or certainly taking.
- [19:16]
Carol Woolton
Credit for it, stage managing this. Do you think she was the first French queen who saw jewelry as a fashion accessory rather than a symbol of monarchy?
- [19:26]
Dr. Sarah Grant
That's a really interesting question. I don't know. I mean, I think, you know, as I said, her predecessor wore very visibly lots of jewels too. And Marie Antoinette, when she arrives at court, she inherits some of those jewels and she also inherits her mother in law's jewels to Louis XVI mother who died when he was 11. You know, she inherits those two pearls, I think. Is it, is it possibly that just everything was becoming so much more imaginative and creative that that applied to jewels too? I mean, during, during her time. Famously, this Paris jeweller says, we are now in the age of the diamond. You know, this is the time for marriage now. We are now in the age of the diamond and the cuts were definitely improving and so they were far sparklier than, than they had been previously. And you see many more designs coming out and we have some of the designs by different jewellers in the exhibition as well in the jewelry section. So it could be as well that the people were giving more attention to jewels and playing with jewels a little bit more and sort of using them more inventively because the cuts had improved. Yes, it's a really good point.
- [20:30]
Carol Woolton
Then you talk about branding and her initials, as you said, that she was gifted this, the bracelets with her initials on them. So how important was it to her that Marie Antoinette became the name that was at the forefront in her jewellery or in everything that she wore and had around her?
- [20:50]
Dr. Sarah Grant
I think it is important to her. I mean, I think she has this formative experience where when she arrives in Strasbourg, so after she's had that handover in the middle of the Rhine where she changes from her Austrian clothes into her French clothes and then she visits Strasbourg, which is the first French stop, you know, Alsatian stop. On her journey, on that two and a half week journey from Vienna to Versailles, she is greeted by her monogram in huge illuminated lights and fireworks. So they had staged this huge demonstration of a big Ma Marte in front of the Episcopal palace in Strasbourg. And I'm sure that must have really struck her. And then she does, you know, once she arrives at Versailles, because she's not capable, she's not allowed to build anything. You know, she can't undertake architectural schemes, she can't commission huge cycles of history paintings, for instance, which are things that kings do. And she is allowed to refurbish her interiors and she does that obsessively. So she does a lot of refurbishing and redecorating and her monograms becomes integral to that. And I do think for her it was a form of asserting herself on her environment. It was a form, you know, she has such limited powers. This was for her very, very important because it's everywhere. It's in her library, it's in her boudoir, it's in her bedroom. You know, she embroiders it herself on her cushions. It's on her furniture, it's on every single item. In her personal toilet case, 94 different pieces are all monogrammed. And then I think most, most symbolic at the Presid Triennial, when you come in, there's the wrought iron and gilt bronze staircase and she takes out Louis Crossed earls and she puts in the big marriage Mat Ma. So that it's the first thing you see when you come in. So, yes, I think it was a very big statement by her.
- [22:37]
Carol Woolton
When you think she was really treated like a young chattel at such a young age, wasn't she? It's almost like she had no identity in this maneuvering of power play, using her and sending her to the French court. So maybe it is a way of saying, actually, I am a person here. I am Marie Antoinette.
- [22:56]
Dr. Sarah Grant
Yes.
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Carol Woolton
And this sort of endless reminder, I.
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Dr. Sarah Grant
Think there's a really interesting letter that she sends to her brother where she says, I have almost no influence at all. And she says if people of the public realize just how little influence I actually have, I would have even less, you know. So she says, I give the appearance that I have some command over what goes on and the King's, you know, kind of opinions, because otherwise, if people realize just how little I actually had, you know, I would be completely ignored or sort of disregarded. And I think that is really fascinating. He deliberately excluded her from any kind of conversations about court affairs. And then in the end, you know, it is actually her who's negotiating or trying to negotiate their release or their escape, because he has what historians now believe is a mental breakdown. So she ends up taking over during the revolutionary years. But, yes, she has very little role, especially when she doesn't have any children yet either, because her other main role is to provide heirs. And because the marriage famously goes unconstummated for seven years, she is sort of at loss, in a way.
- [24:04]
Carol Woolton
Yes. Very vulnerable. She's in a very vulnerable position, isn't she?
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Dr. Sarah Grant
Yes.
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Carol Woolton
How aware do you think she was of supporting the French luxury industries, the silk industries, the jewelry industries?
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Dr. Sarah Grant
Very aware. I mean, they wouldn't let her forget it. I mean, she obviously has her budget, her set budget, which had been established 50 years before, again for the previous queen.
- [24:28]
Carol Woolton
And what would that have been? How much would that have been, roughly?
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Dr. Sarah Grant
So the equivalent today of her wardrobe budget is around three quarters of a million pounds. That was her annual budget. That was how much she was given to spend, although, as I said, that actually hadn't been updated in 50 years. So she exceeds it almost immediately because it's completely out of date. I think her most extravagant year in the 1780s, she almost doubles that almost. Not quite. But at the same time, you know. So what is that? That's probably about £1.4 million that she spends in her most extravagant year. But at the same time, France spent 11 billion pounds on the French War of Independence, you know, so, I mean, it's France, as you know, France is virtually bankrupt when she arrives. So she's, it's not her expenditure, certainly not her expenditure on her wardrobe that is, that is bankrupting France. But she is expected to spend because as you said, she, she is supposed to be visibly supporting the French textile industries, in particular the silk weaving industry in Lyon, which is where all her silks come from. It's where all her silk accessories come from too, like ribbons, you know, silk gloves, silk stockings, silk flowers that she wears in her hairstyles and the silk gauze and the silk crepe that she also wears in her hair. So she supports that. She also supports the printed cotton manufactories in France. And yes, when she doesn't, when she wears foreign imports or when she is seen to be wearing products that are perhaps eroding slightly the prominence of those industries, then she is criticized very, very heavily.
- [26:05]
Carol Woolton
So she, she has a duty to spend.
- [26:08]
Dr. Sarah Grant
She has, she has a duty. She has a duty to spend. And so she's supporting those industries and she's also supporting her own staff. I mean, the wardrobe staff is substantial and they have a vested interest in her spending because they are allowed to select the majority actually of the gowns at the end of the year. So she rewore some of her gowns, but most of them are given to her ladies in waiting and the members of the wardrobe, even down to what we call the boys of the wardrobe, the garcons des gare des robes, they are allowed to choose an informal gown and maybe some gloves and this kind of thing, and then they can sell them. And that was part of their salary. So everyone was relying on her to spend, spend lavishly. And actually she's not even placing the orders herself. It is the woman who's in charge of her wardrobe, who's one of her ladies in waiting. And she was accused of theft by the Austrian ambassador. He said she was placing orders that were far too large, excessively large, because they knew that at the end of the year they would be able to sell what is left over.
- [27:04]
Carol Woolton
And so what was the size of this wardrobe when you said people could actually come and visit it? What was the size of it?
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Dr. Sarah Grant
So it was consisted of around 108 gowns. And then obviously you have all the different. So it was around 108 gowns every year. It filled three rooms in her, behind her formal, her formal apartments, there were three big rooms that were devoted to the wardrobe. They're still there. You can go and see them. They're not on the public circuit. And they were lined with wardrobes and cupboards and they had tables down the middle so that you could lay the gowns on them and you could alter them. But then obviously, in addition to the gowns, you have all the other garments and accessories too. You have your shoes, stockings, bands, you know, hats, you have cloaks, you have dominoes, which you wear with your masquerade gowns, you have ribbons, you know, you have fans, all those things. So there are all the many sort of other accessories. Then you have things like the pannier as well, which were made for her by someone in her wardrobe. You have the chemise, which are her undergarments, which people didn't wear underwear, they just wore chemise, which is a linen tunic as well. And we have the list of all the different people who made these and supplied these and where she bought her lace and all those different things. So, yes, so there were these three rooms. I don't know if it's the rooms that people were taken to or whether part of a portion of the wardrobe was taken out for people to see in a public room, which I think is more likely. But there is an English visitor here who comes and she describes them and she just. She cannot get over the opulence of the gowns and the beautiful colours and the amazing trimmings.
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Carol Woolton
It must have been sensational, mustn't it?
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Dr. Sarah Grant
Yes, yes.
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Carol Woolton
And you've got so much in the exhibition that looks so fresh. Yes, the silk looks so fresh. It's extraordinary bright, that beautiful pink and white stripe silk gown.
- [28:57]
Dr. Sarah Grant
Yes, yes. And I think it's actually, it's sad and it's tantalizing when you read the descriptions of some of the things she wears. And Vigilaupin, her artist, her favorite portrait painter, she describes how she saw the queen at Fontainebleau fully dressed in full court dress. And she says she was just absolutely dazzling. The sunshine fell upon her. And I've never seen anything more dazzling than her in this kind of court gown with her diamonds as well. And yes, we have two fragments that do survive from the wardrobe that was looted, because the wardrobe was looted and dispersed in 1792. And they give you a sense, just the sense of what the entire wardrobe must have looked like. You know, these are covered, these two fragments in beautiful silver and gold sequins. The thread is all gold thread. It's amazing. Kind of velvet and silk and beautiful metal thread, embroidery. You know, it's the very peak of kind of production ever not just in 1870 century, but ever in the history of dress. So, yes, it would have been the most remarkable sight. I mean, that was why it was something that people would travel to actually view.
- [29:58]
Carol Woolton
And that's partly why you talk about and you show in the exhibition, why her style has been so enduring, because it remains so appealing and her timeless motifs. And the fact is, she continues to shape creative expression all these years later. And you go on in the show to show the couturiers now, Jean Galliano, Chanel, how they've been inspired by her look.
- [30:28]
Dr. Sarah Grant
Yes. I mean, I think she's so. She's queen for 19 years. And as we said, her style changes quite rapidly in that time. It goes from that rococo to kind of, you know, amazing. The sort of excesses of the 1770s, when the hairstyles were huge, you know, and everything was completely trimmed and decorated and bows were everywhere and, you know, everything was sort of pink and pastel to the kind of neoclassicism and the more kind of refined style that's leading sort of gradually towards the revolution. So there are so many different parts of her style that couturiers today can draw on. You know, it's an endlessly rich kind of scene to mind.
- [31:04]
Carol Woolton
Do you think they concentrate on the peak. The peak of her extravagance and excess?
- [31:12]
Dr. Sarah Grant
I mean, that is certainly one of the most fun parts, I would say. If you're going to be inspired by something, then the kind of. The fun part is definitely the 1770s, because it's outrageous. And some of these hairstyles with miniature lakes and landscapes in them, an entire ship completely in replica and all those things, these are fun for designers to look to. But I think, you know, her taste. Her taste doesn't joke that she had exquisite taste. She had very, very good taste. And that you can see that in the exhibition, both in terms of the fashion and the interiors. So I think, yes, the 1770s is perhaps the most fun part, but there's plenty there for people, really.
- [31:56]
Carol Woolton
And you've got Sofia Coppola's film, the earrings that Kirsten Dance wore in the film and showing how. And actually, what was interesting, when I first saw the show, I straight back and watched Sofia Coppola's film, and you see all the references.
- [32:13]
Dr. Sarah Grant
Yes, yes. I mean, Melena Cananeras designs, Amanola Blahnik's shoes, and actually. And she used. Sofia Coppola insisted on using real jewels in that film as well. So she. She went to Fred Layton. You know, they sell antique jewelry and so she sourced jewels from them to use because she wanted everything to fit, feel really kind of natural and real and covetable. And I think that's what makes that film so beautiful, is that they do look stylish in a way that we consider people to look stylish today because everything is real and genuine. It's not a sort of fusty kind of period film costume, you know. So I think that's part of the magic of that film, actually, and part of many decisions that she took. Sofia Coppola, that have really cemented its kind of iconic cult status.
- [33:04]
Carol Woolton
Yes, it does have that veneer of luxury, doesn't it? Yes, it really is beautiful.
- [33:09]
Dr. Sarah Grant
Yes.
- [33:10]
Carol Woolton
And youth, of course. She's the first one who really portrayed Marie Antoinette as so young.
- [33:15]
Dr. Sarah Grant
Exactly, yes. I mean, she. Kirsten Dunst, I think. Is she 20? She's kind of teetering on teenagehood. It's a very young cast. She said as well she wanted them all to speak in their normal voices and accents. She didn't want to affect a kind of period accent for that, for that film. And, yes, it really conveys the exuberance and the fun of youth and I think some of the kind of giddiness that obviously surrounded that very young royal family at the beginning.
- [33:42]
Carol Woolton
So the exhibition continues and goes up to her death. And very poignantly, after all the lavish spectacle of all her dresses, you land up with a white chemise. Can you talk about that?
- [33:53]
Dr. Sarah Grant
Yes. So this is her chemise, so her underwear that she wore in prison. And when she leaves the Trinary palace, when the Trinity palace is sacked in 1792, she leaves everything behind, including jewels she'd already smuggled out her personal jewels, obviously, the ones that would then, some of which then come to auction in 2018 and 2021. But she. She leaves behind, obviously, kind of the second tier or second rank jewels. And these are the ones that are inventoried in the 1795 inventory. And she leaves behind her wardrobe because it's important to say that jewels are considered part of the wardrobe, and that's why they appear in inventories together with the wardrobe as well. And so she leaves all that behind and she goes to the prison and they give her an allowance to order some new clothes, because obviously, obviously, she only has what she has. You know, she only has what she has on because they have. They have run, they have fled. So she orders some new underwear, including the chemise that you see in the exhibition. And she wore that up until the point that she was removed from there to the Next prison, because she's taken before her trial and execution. By this stage, it was clear where things were going. She is separated from her daughter and her. Her sister in law. She'd already been separated from her son. And she's taken to the next prison, the final prison. And she left behind that underwear. And the prison superintendent hung onto it. He recognized its significance and he retained it. And it descends through his family until they decide in 1911 to gift it to the Cannon Valley Museum in Paris.
- [35:32]
Carol Woolton
That's an amazing story, isn't it? To have that for that to survive.
- [35:37]
Dr. Sarah Grant
It's a really, I think when you see is very poignant. It is quite a moving, you know, it's a relic, essentially. You know, she wore that obviously next to her skin. And the glass magnifies it. When you see it in the case, the glass makes it seem larger than it is.
- [35:54]
Carol Woolton
Yes, it does. Yes, it does, definitely.
- [35:56]
Dr. Sarah Grant
And when we had it out in the textile conservation studio because our conservators here at the V and A had to devise a new way of mounting, wanting it for our exhibition because we wanted to show it upright, we didn't want to show it flat because it is now very fragile. And we were looking at it and it was so small, Carol, really. Yes, it did look very small. And you realize, I mean, you saw her shoes as well.
- [36:16]
Carol Woolton
Oh, so they were like. I mean, you can't imagine. It made Kirsten Dunce look like they were great flippers. You know, these are the tiniest little, almost like dolls, slippers.
- [36:30]
Dr. Sarah Grant
So her underwear is the same. It felt very, very moving to see that actually on the table in front of us.
- [36:35]
Carol Woolton
Yes, very moving. I mean, that part in the dark with part of a guillotine next to it is very, very moving. And you do get a sense of her bravery and courage.
- [36:45]
Dr. Sarah Grant
I think you get a sense as well, the deterioration in her, you know, sort of circumstances as well. You get this sense of the absolute, of what she was reducing to by the end. Because it is a pretty humble article of clothing and, you know, compared to kind of the opulent silk gowns, the silver gown that you see at the beginning, all the jewels that you see at the beginning, you know, this is really what she's reduced to. And then in prison at the end, you know, when she's in the Conciergerie prison, she only has two dresses left and one pair of shoes and that's it. And that's all that remains of that extraordinary wardrobe that she wants.
- [37:20]
Carol Woolton
And you have those poignant quotes of I have no more tears to cry for you, my children. And you get the sense of probably death was a release from the suffering and torture.
- [37:31]
Dr. Sarah Grant
Exactly. I have read that note so many times, and actually, every time I read it, I feel slightly teary because it is a desperate note. It is. So it really does convey her state of mind right at the end of her. The very last thing that she writes. And, you know, she's thinking of her children and what has become of them. She has no idea. And she's, you know, asking God for his mercy, for his. For his pity. And so it is a very, very moving note. And I think her sister's quote as well, that we include. So this is Maria Carolina, her elder sister and actually her favorite sister. And she was also sent on a dynastic marriage. She was sent to Naples to marry King. Future king Naples. And she says a few days before Mary Janet's trial, she writes to one of their relatives, and she says everything that ends her torture is good, because by this stage, she'd been imprisoned for sort of three years, you know, and she was. She was also ill. And, you know, one of her children had already died. She hadn't seen her other children. You know, she'd been separated from her son when he was 7 years old. And she. Things were so desperate for her that her sister felt it would. If she died, you know, it'd be a mercy for her if she died.
- [38:42]
Carol Woolton
Do you think by looking at all these artifacts and piecing together her life through these objects and fashion, did you get a glimpse into her personal life? Did it make you feel you had some understanding of that?
- [38:57]
Dr. Sarah Grant
I mean, they say, don't they, that you can never really know a historical figure. You can never really know someone. And you have to sort of maintain that state of neutrality. I think when you read her letters in particular, get a real sense of her personality, which is charming. And I think when you. And actually, one of the letters that we have is the letter that she's writing to one of her close friends about her husband. She's complaining about her husband, which just feels like this sort of timeless.
- [39:27]
Carol Woolton
I think she had quite a bit to complain about that. She did.
- [39:30]
Dr. Sarah Grant
Yes. To be fair, I guess she did.
- [39:32]
Carol Woolton
He wasn't the greatest husband.
- [39:34]
Dr. Sarah Grant
He wasn't the greatest husband. He was apparently a very good father. Apparently he was a good father. But, yes, not a wonderful husband. Certainly not the kind of the great romantic sort of figure that she has in Count Fersen, you know, the Swedish aristocrat that she has the Affair with who then tries to help her escape. But, yes, I think her letters convey a lot about her. I think, as well, her toiletry service, the parts of her toilet, things like her little eye wash cup and her powder pot and things like that to me, because they are. Again, we all, you know, we all kind of wash our faces and we all, you know, some of us put on powder. And I just. For me, that also made her seem extremely real and human and seeing her hair as well. We have her hair in the exhibition. And again, I think it's something very intimate and personal and that was something really that we're trying to do. Weren't trying to lead visitors in any particular direction or form. You know, we want them to form their own opinions about her. And, you know, her style, obviously, is timeless. That's something that's sort of, you know, undeniable. But in terms of how you feel about her as a person and a historical figure, we wanted people to make up their own minds. But certainly for me, when I see those objects and when I read her letters and when you read these wonderful accounts as well, a lot of the English visitors to Versailles give us fantastic accounts of Marinette in a way that we don't have actually from French sources, because so many letters and so many papers were destroyed during the Revolution. It's the English correspondence and the English diplomatic correspondence that's invaluable to us. And there are wonderful accounts of her sense of humour and jokes just she made and, you know, and how lively she was at balls and how everybody sort of found her charming and effervescent. And so to me, you know, those things have definitely influenced how I see her.
- [41:25]
Carol Woolton
And how do you see her at the end of it?
- [41:27]
Dr. Sarah Grant
I think she is unarguably a figure of great style, a figure with great taste. I think she was somebody who was a devoted and very affectionate mother. I think she was someone who was open to new ideas. I think, you know, obviously, she. She's still very much a woman of her time, a woman of the 18th century, and she's bound by those constraints. I think that towards the end, she is incredibly stoic. I think, you know, that she. The way she performs at her trial, where she defends herself and her behavior right to the end. You know, actually, if I can draw a contrast between her and Madame du Barry. So Madame du Barry is through the 15th century, last mistress. She's the one who's in place when he dies of smallpox and she is exiled, because once the king is dead, the Mistress has to be exiled. She is then brought also and tried and guillotined. And the difference between her behavior at her execution and Marie Antoinette's behaviour is sort of night and day. So Marie Antoinette, she calmly, you know, she walks up the stairs, apparently she trips over the executioner's foot and she says, I'm so sorry, you know, Pat. Apparently that's what she says. But she's very calm and dignified and she has, you know, she's resigned to her fate, man. And Dubarry has to be dragged kicking and screaming up the steps to the guillotine. She's, you know, poor thing is absolutely sort of scared out of her wits. But I think it's remarkable that Marie Chanet, given everything she'd endured up to that point, could be so calm and so stuck and dignified. So I think, you know, that is remarkable.
- [42:56]
Carol Woolton
And so on blaming.
- [42:57]
Dr. Sarah Grant
Yeah. And they both say, both she and Louis XVI say in their letters, you know, that they are insistent that their children try not to seek revenge or that their children forgive their sort of the people who've imprisoned them, you know, or sentence them to death because they don't want reprisals. They don't want them to be. They don't want them to be victims either.
- [43:18]
Carol Woolton
Well, what's very poignant is that you begin the exhibition with Marie Antoinette's mother's voice and what she said to her daughter when she left for France, all eyes will be on you. And you've proved, Sarah, that all eyes are still on Marie Antoinette all these years later. It really is a wonderful exhibition.
- [43:39]
Dr. Sarah Grant
Oh, thank you very much. I found that relationship, that mother, daughter relationship, so interesting. And fashion is part of that relationship to your marriage in that sense. Her fashion plates from Paris and says, this is how women of your age are dressing. And she says, she gives her advice as well, because in France, after the age of 35, your hair was not supposed to be as high, you're supposed to wear it lower and you're supposed to avoid bright colours. I mean, you're supposed to sort of turn into this moth. Anyway, so she was sending her also hairstyle fashion plates for her mother as well, saying, you know, this is how you could wear your hair. She sends her scent from Paris, perfume from Paris. And I think it's remarkable that Maria Theresa, she had 16 children that 13 of whom survived to adulthood. But her correspondence with Marie Antoinette is amazing. And yes, she's the one who says those kind of immortal words, all eyes will be on you. And she knew that Marie Antoinette had this huge challenge ahead of her, and she says after that, she actually follows in the next sentence, she says, so do not, therefore, create a scandal.
- [44:44]
Carol Woolton
Ironic.
- [44:45]
Dr. Sarah Grant
Yes, yes.
- [44:46]
Carol Woolton
How long did it take you to track everything?
- [44:49]
Dr. Sarah Grant
Well, I pitched the exhibition in 2017, so it was eight years ago. So that was when I first started to kind of keep my eye on things. But then, obviously, things like the sales that, you know, that came up not just of jewels but also furniture has also sold. More things have resurfaced, and more things will, you know, undoubtedly resurface as well as they continue to come up. But it was really four years in earnest. And the key thing for us was the relationship with Versailles, because we have 17 historic loans from them, and most of them haven't left France before. So that was key. And I also wanted to make sure the pieces of the wardrobe that we've reunited for the first time, that we could secure those, too. So there are things that didn't make it, but very, very few. I mean, really, everything that was sort of on my shopping list, so to speak, you got. Yeah.
- [45:40]
Carol Woolton
So that's amazing.
- [45:41]
Dr. Sarah Grant
That's very lucky.
- [45:42]
Carol Woolton
And, you know, it's things that people haven't seen before, necessarily. So it's special. It's very special, yeah. To have that.
- [45:49]
Dr. Sarah Grant
There was this amazing moment, actually, because she did, as I. As we discussed, she loved England. She was a total Anglophile, you know, and she bought English books and she bought prints of English houses and, you know, English portraits as well. And there was this moment when the famous portrait of her that we've borrowed from Versailles, which is at the beginning, you know, of her holding the rose when we took that out of the crate. And I thought, I can't believe she always wanted to go to England and, of course, never could because she wasn't allowed to leave the country. The fact that she was finally here in some way felt like this sort of symbolic thing that she crossed the Channel. And because she did cross the Channel, she came in a truck and, you know, so she didn't fly, and so she crossed the Channel and finally she was in England. And that did feel really special, actually.
- [46:38]
Carol Woolton
You brought her here.
- [46:39]
Dr. Sarah Grant
Yeah. So that's something.
- [46:42]
Carol Woolton
Well, you've brought her alive. And I urge anyone to go and see the exhibition and they get such a sense of this young girl and this tragedy that ensues. So thank you so much for sharing, sharing it with us.
- [46:58]
Dr. Sarah Grant
Sarah, thank you very much. Thank you for having me.
- [47:05]
Carol Woolton
Thank you for listening for this and other episodes of if Jules Could Talk please go to our website carolwalton.com do share it any way you can and we love to have a rating and a comment. For more about our sponsors, please go to. Don't forget the book of the podcast is out in any good bookstore or on Amazon. Join me again for the next jewelled nugget, when we will take a deep dive into a French heist. No, not that one. We've already done the Louvre Museum heist, which you can find in our back catalogue. This will be about the affair of the the diamond necklace which precipitated the fall of the French monarchy. Join me then and thank you for listening. Bye bye. If Jules Could Talk with Carole Woolton is produced by Natasha Cowan. Music and editing by Tim Thornton Graphics by Scott Bentley. Illustration by Jordi Labander Sam.