Louis & His Queen Don the Finest Finery in 'Marie Antoinette’s Finale

And so we come to the end of the beginning; conveniently, also the name of this episode, which suits our final exploration of the most lavish and interesting costume design moments in Marie Antoinette’s second season. This episode features many reliable old friends I’ve discussed before, including Provence’s green jacket with the artichokes; Orléans’ devotion to various shades of purple (and let us not forget about capes and dressing gowns!), even Mme. Rohan-Soubise’s haughty widow’s black, making it even easier to train the spotlight on the magnificent capital-R ROYAL garments Louis and Antoinette wear to attend the high-pressure Estates-General assembly in a last-ditch effort to convince all of their constituencies of the necessity of raising taxes in order to keep the entire French economy afloat. 

To that end, Antoinette goes for Maximum Queenliness in a gown with a scoop neckline, ¾ sleeves featuring gathered lace cuffs, and massive panniers. Once she’s ensconced in the carriage with Louis, it’s clear that her gown is ivory, but in certain lights it can look anywhere from dove gray to palest celadon green. The main fabric is silk damask, but the pattern woven into it is simple, bordering on severe: vertical stripes of varying widths. The stomacher at the center of her bodice is richly embroidered and beaded, with a massive fleur-de-lis brooch at the center of her bustline. 

It’s not just the gown that’s going for broke (sorry, sorry, I couldn’t resist), but her hair and makeup, too. Her eyelids are dusted in silvery blue, her cheeks and lips are rouged, and there’s even gold dust at strategic points around her face, the equivalent of an 18th-century highlight. Antoinette’s curls are teased up into a becoming halo/crown hybrid around her face, and are enhanced with gold powder and brooches set into the coiffure. 

The entire thing is topped with an arrangement of snowy white ostrich plumes. But for the plumes, she looks positively leonine, and Louis, for all his bone-deep anxiety about the speech he’s been nervously and unconvincingly rehearsing, still has the presence of mind to notice and sincerely compliment his wife, telling her, “You look magnificent.” 

For his part, Louis is in a suit we can barely see, which is fine, because the main event is his cape. This little number puts the ROYAL in royal blue, a lush, deep shade enhanced by the way the velvet fabric and its embroidered gold fleur-de-lis all catch the light. The body of the cape flows down from a massive yoke of ermine, with the little black tufts strewn across the white expanse providing texture upon texture. The entire thing is topped with Louis’s chain of office, square links of gold, with red enamel. 

There’s also a central pendant, an eight-pointed star. He, too, is made up, with a white face and rouge on his cheeks and lips, emphasizing that they really did not go for the no-makeup makeup look back then. 

The royal couple are aware that they have roles to inhabit and performances to deliver, and what they choose to wear for the occasion are as much costumes to them as they are to us. 

More so than in earlier episodes this season, I wondered how closely these costumes hew to actual historical garments worn at such occasions. Happily, the official Chateau de Versailles website offers a detailed description: 

“The king himself was wearing an overcoat of golden fabric and was surrounded by the most important Officers to the Crown. On his hat, he wore the Regent Diamond, which was the largest diamond in the kingdom. The queen was wearing a gold and silver dress.” 

Perhaps a robe such as the one Louis is wearing in this scene existed, but if it did, he did not wear it for this particular appearance. Describing the queen’s dress so generally as “gold and silver” is skimpy, but that provides an invitation to get very imaginative with her look.

The triumphant scene at the Estates-General is the last purely happy moment for the royal couple. The remainder of the episode is one awful moment after another, as the dauphin succumbs to tuberculosis and they are plunged into grief. After receiving Louis’s speech on taxation so warmly, the third estate (commoners) objected to their votes counting less than those of the nobility and church men, turning on Louis and writing a new constitution to limit monarchical power and increase the political authority of the people of France. After that, the revolution begins in earnest as Parisians storm the Bastille, an angry mob attacks Versailles in search of supposedly hoarded grain, and most of the court flees to safety as the tattered remains of the House of Bourbon stay. This is their home, and besides, they have nowhere to go. 

As Marni Cerise noted in her recap of the season finale, there’s so much story yet to be told in a potential third season, which Ani Bundel reports hasn’t yet been formally announced. If a third season of Marie Antoinette graces our screens in the next few years, I’ll need to shift gears as lavish gowns give way to considerably less formal clothes in more modest fabrics, but wherever there are costumes on screen, there are details worth noticing and discussing. Until next time!

All episodes of Marie Antoinette Seasons 1 and 2 are available to stream for members on PBS Passport, the PBS App, and the PBS Masterpiece Prime Video Channel. Season 3 has not yet been commissioned.