To the tune of Bow Wow Wow’s cover of “I Want Candy,” Kirsten Dunst as Marie Antoinette tries on shoes, dresses and jewels. It’s one of the most iconic scenes of the film decade. Marie Antoinette by Sofia Coppola turns twenty this year. Versailles is marking the occasion with its own exhibition. “Marie-Antoinette par Sofia Coppola” runs at the Petit Trianon, from September 22, 2026 to January 24, 2027. Look closer, and something interesting emerges. The film itself was built on layering from the start, fashion, painting and architecture alike.
Layer one: The film as fashion
Manolo Blahnik designed around twenty original shoe models for the film. He drew on 18th-century footwear, which he described as “tiny masterpieces of proportion and craftsmanship.” He elongated them, reshaped them, and made them more contemporary and playful. That’s especially true in the moment the film leaves them scattered carelessly next to a pair of Converse sneakers.
The film’s costumes won an Academy Award. They were designed by Milena Canonero, around 170 costumes in total. Roughly a hundred of them were for the lead actress alone.
Manolo Blahnik, a shoe capsule collection inspired by Marie Antoinette. Source: Financial Times, "Let them wear Manolos!" Photo: © Alamy.Layer two: Milena Canonero as a crossing point of cinema
Italian costume designer Milena Canonero, a three-time Oscar winner, isn’t tied to Marie Antoinette alone. The same woman designed the costumes for Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange (1971) and Barry Lyndon (1975, which won her first Oscar), as well as for Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014, another Oscar). Dystopia, Napoleonic Europe, and a fictional Central European hotel, three entirely different cinematic worlds, united by the same hand.
Layer three: A painting that became a film
The film’s pastel, lighthearted visual tone draws directly from 18th-century Rococo masters, François Boucher and Jean-Honoré Fragonard, elegance, softness, hedonistic beauty. One scene, in which Count Fersen gallops on horseback, deliberately echoes the dynamic composition of Jacques-Louis David’s Napoleon Crossing the Alps, as if Fersen were a romanticized cinematic fantasy painted into motion.
Even the film’s famous opening shot, Kirsten Dunst reclining lazily among pastries, is a direct homage to a 1977 fashion photograph by Guy Bourdin for Charles Jourdan. Coppola herself confirmed it, she pulled the image as a direct reference for the scene. The film borrows as readily from two-hundred-year-old painting as from fashion photography shot barely a decade before cameras rolled.
Layer four: A building that was a refuge
The film was shot largely on location at Versailles, in the main palace and at the Petit Trianon, a neoclassical building constructed by Ange-Jacques Gabriel between 1762 and 1768 for Louis XV. Louis XVI later gave it to Marie Antoinette as her private escape from the rigid rules of court life. The grounds also hold the Hameau de la Reine, a rustic mock-village the queen had built as an architectural expression of her longing for a simple rural life.
To protect the heritage site, some scenes were shot at Château de Millemont, where fabrics, decoration and furniture were meticulously reconstructed after the originals. Today it’s part of the exhibition itinerary.
Fun fact: filming inside the palace itself took up 19 of the production’s 57 total shooting days, requiring a massive logistical effort so as not to disrupt the museum’s regular public access.
Curators and context
The exhibition was organized by Laurent Salomé, Director of the National Museum of the Château de Versailles, and Hélène Delalex, Chief Curator of Heritage at Versailles. It also includes a video interview with Sofia Coppola herself and a workshop program that includes embroidery.
Practically speaking
“Marie-Antoinette par Sofia Coppola” runs at the Petit Trianon, Château de Versailles, from September 22, 2026 to January 24, 2027.
Sources: Château de Versailles, Domus, Aperture — Sofia Coppola on the Photographs that Inspired Her Films
