This spring, the fashion world has traded quiet luxury for the audacious silhouette of Marie Antoinette. Two decades after Sofia Coppola's film immortalized the queen of frivolity, her spirit is back - not merely in couture, but in the intimate architecture that defined her era. At the Lingerie Museum, we see this revival as a homecoming for the corset, the garment that once structured both body and society.
Designers from Jonathan Anderson at Dior to Junya Watanabe have resurrected rococo maximalism, but the real story lies beneath the crinolines. The Palais Galliera's current exhibition, "Fashion in the 18th Century: A Fantasized Legacy," features Marie Antoinette's own boneless corset - a sea-green taffeta relic with a 20.5-inch waist. Acquired in 1997, it is so fragile that this may be its final public appearance. Its backward-tilted armholes and plunging neckline imposed a posture of courtly submission, yet also liberated the wearer into a realm of erotic suggestion. As curator Pascale Gorguet Ballesteros notes, the 18th century "switches between states of undress and dress, putting seduction center stage."
This season's lingerie borrows that same tension. Harris Reed, who cites Coppola's film as formative, channeled the V&A's "Marie Antoinette Style" exhibition into his Nina Ricci collection, pairing moiré corsets with ruffled cage skirts. For Reed, this is a rebellion against fast fashion and toxic masculinity: "Personality is coming back. Clothing taking up space."
Across Paris, the Musée des Arts Décoratifs explores a "A Day in the 18th Century," complete with custom scents, while the Palace of Versailles plans a fall exhibition around Coppola's film. The message is clear: in uncertain times, we crave beauty that heals. The corset, once a symbol of constraint, now offers a fantastical escape - a structured embrace of pleasure, femininity, and the power to take up space.
Originally reported by WWD