The Frick: ‘Ruffles & Ribbons: Fashion Plates from the Time of Marie Antoinette’/ Opens 4.1st

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Ruffles & Ribbons:

Fashion Plates from the Time of Marie Antoinette

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Cabinet Gallery Installation to Open in Conjunction

with the Frick’s Exhibition Gainsborough: The Fashion of Portraiture

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April 1 through August 3, 2026

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 Starting April 1, The Frick Collection will present Ruffles & Ribbons: Fashion Plates from the Time of Marie Antoinette in the Cabinet Gallery, displaying twenty-four hand-colored engravings, known as fashion plates, depicting French dress in the late eighteenth century. This marks the Frick’s first gallery presentation drawn entirely from the Frick Art Research Library’s holdings.

Organized in conjunction with the special exhibition Gainsborough: The Fashion of Portraiture, which opens on February 12, the installation showcases a selection of captivating prints from the Frick Art Research Library’s set of Gallerie des modes et costumes français (1778–87), the largest and most influential fashion plate series of its time. The plates offer rare insights into the world of clothing and accessories during the reign of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. French designs as captured in the prints also influenced fashion farther afield, as seen in Gainsborough’s contemporaneous portraits of British society figures.

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