Lace in the V&A Marie Antoinette exhibition

 

Although several of the artefacts in this exhibition at the V&A Museum in London once belonged to Marie Antoinette, such as the chemise she wore in prison before her execution, her prayer book, a shoe, and items from her dressing table, none of the lace on display can be attributed to her. However, the examples are typical of the time and are similar to lace she would have worn. The image shows a detail of a beautiful silk embroidered robe from about 1780 embellished with white silk bobbin lace and net.

The first garment on display in the exhibition is a beautiful silver brocade, silk gown and train worn in 1774 by Marie Antoinette’s sister in law, a future Queen of Sweden. It is thought to be a copy of the dress 14-year-old Marie Antoinette wore on her wedding day in 1770 to the 15-year-old Louis-Auguste, Dauphin of France, the future king Louis XVI.

Paintings of the wedding show Marie Antoinette sparkling in this formal court dress, known as a robe de cour. The extensive train is edged with silver bobbin lace which is attached from the bodice and round the circumference of the train. Silver lace is made from a core of thread wrapped in silver so is quite stiff and does not gather well. Applying it to the fabric in this way allows it to catch the light and shimmer. It would have looked spectacular in candlelight.

This bodice stiffened with whalebone is similar to ones Marie Antoinette would have worn at the French court. These bodices were very uncomfortable and her mother, the Austrian empress Maria Theresa, writing in one of her numerous letters to her daughter offers to send her a more comfortable one from Vienna. This bodice dates from about 1760 and is embellished with rows of silver bobbin lace in a scalloped design.

Lighter more delicate lace at this time was mainly needle made and the exhibition includes these fine Alençon lace borders dating from 1780-1820. This type of lace would have been used to edge sleeves and frills.

These two pieces of lace are lappets, which were lengths of lace that hung down either side of a cap. Some hung over the ears, others down the back and lappets could also be pinned up on the top of the head. I have not seen any paintings of Marie Antoinette wearing lappets, although her hair is always ornately dressed and she often wears hats, feathers, and jewels on her head. Perhaps lappets were out of fashion by this time or were a fashion for older women. The lower lappet in the image is Alençon lace but the upper one is from Argentan. These two towns were both famous for their fine needle lace and the styles were similar. The main difference is in the ground stitches that form the net. The  Alençon mesh is made up of fine blanket stitches with an extra twist giving a square appearance, while for the Argentan mesh each side of the net is overstitched in blanket stitch making a more solid hexagonal mesh. These are the types of lace that Marie Antoinette would have been familiar with and would have worn. The exhibition also includes more modern examples of lace that fashion designers have used in garments inspired by the Marie Antoinette style but we’ll look at those another day.