"In 2004, Manolo Blahnik received one of the most rewarding commissions of his career: recreating the footwear of France's last queen consort, Marie Antoinette, for the cinema. That work for Sofia Coppola's film, released in 2006 with a fabulous sequence devoted entirely to shoes, closed the first circle of a fascination that had begun for Blahnik in his childhood in La Palma in Spain's Canary Islands, when his mother read him and his sister Evangelina Stefan Zweig's biography of the ill-fated queen."
"Blahnik has spent his life studying the reviled historical figure, who in recent decades thanks in part to the Antonia Fraser biography on which Coppola's film is based has been reappraised, as reflected in the new exhibition. Confined to stodgy Versailles, forced to renounce her family and country of Austria, Marie Antoinette developed a unique style that broke with the strict dictates of French court etiquette."
Manolo Blahnik recreated Marie Antoinette's footwear for Sofia Coppola's 2006 film, completing a lifelong fascination that began in childhood. An exhibition titled Marie Antoinette Style opens September 20 at London's Victoria and Albert Museum, sponsored by the Spanish shoemaker, and brings together 350 pieces including dresses, shoes, jewelry and personal objects. The show includes loans from private collections and items seen outside Versailles for the first time. Marie Antoinette developed a distinctive style that broke French court etiquette and influenced wigs, furniture and broader aesthetics. Historical reappraisal aided by Antonia Fraser's biography and Coppola's film informs the exhibition. The queen was guillotined at 37.
Read at english.elpais.com
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