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From Denver Post - Marie Antoinette has been dead for more than 200 years, but people continue to be fascinated by her. Looking beyond her extravagant habits and trip to the guillotine, she shaped the world of style in ways that today look contemporary but were scandalous in the late 18th century. The subject of a Sofia Coppola movie in 2006 and a couple of recent books, Marie Antoinette’s presence is also felt in the “Artisans and Kings” exhibit at the Denver Art Museum through Jan. 6. The show includes 125 examples of decorative arts, sculptures, paintings and drawings from the reigns of Louis XIV, XV and XVI. The elaborately detailed furniture, silver and porcelain objects in particular recall Marie Antoinette’s high style. The queen defied tradition and set trends the fashion world loves to revisit. MAC cosmetics is calling its holiday collection “Antiquitease” and packaged makeup palettes in ornate gold and silver cases. Sephora and Juicy Couture also have done campaigns influenced by Marie Antoinette. While people have an image of the queen as “an empty-headed party girl, she used fashion in a radical and political way,” said Caroline Weber, an associate professor at Barnard College, Columbia University, who wrote “Queen of Fashion: What Marie Antoinette Wore to the Revolution” (2006, Picador, $16, trade paperback). “She inaugurated the dawn of the aspirational fashion age. (full story)