All In The Details: Making 'Marie Antoinette' Season 2 Costumes Dazzle
From the start, the second season of Marie Antoinette holds a smattering of small victories and an overabundance of significant-to-catastrophic losses, but everyone sure looks gorgeous through it all. We could publish daily close-reads of nearly every scene’s visual riches, and if there were considerably less TV to cover, we might! In the absence of unlimited time and word counts, however, we’re delighted to share insights from series costume designer Marie Fremont’s generous behind-the-scenes look at her team’s approach.
The scope and scale of work required to keep the Court of Versailles in late 18th-century splendor through the second season’s many ups and downs — A frigid winter! Illicit affairs! A pregnancy of questionable parentage! Increasing political unrest! The French economy teetering on a knife edge! A jewel scam to make Ocean’s 8 look like child’s play! — is astonishing. Fremont noted immediately that “even if we were able to reuse a few costumes from the end of Season 1, every piece for the 30 first main characters are made bespoke in our workshop,” going well beyond the dresses, coats, and breeches to encompass “corsets, chemises, and petticoats, [and everything from] coats to shirts for the men.”
The vast number of items to be created required “a fantastic team of about 60 people”, and even all of their work was supplemented with costume rentals from houses across Europe for extras and background actors to wear. Considering the vast number of garments and various fabrics, some pieces had to be worn too frequently to be laundered on a routine schedule. On such occasions, these items got the classic costumer’s treatment of “vodka, generously sprayed on each piece at the end of the day” to kill bacteria, deodorize, and make them suitable for wear again the following day.
