In 2006, Annie Leibovitz photographed a 25 year old Kirsten Dunst at the Palace of Versailles. It was amid a seismic moment for the young actor—for the past few years, she reached global superstardom playing Mary Jane Watson in Spiderman. Now, she was about to take an prestige-film turn by playing the titular role in Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette.
Leibovitz’s portraits of Dunst, where she wears a mix of the film’s costumes as well as high fashions of the time (including Chanel Haute Couture’s “Petit Trianon” dress), ran alongside an essay chronicling the Antoinette’s complicated life within the French court. “You’re considered superficial and silly if you’re interested in fashion,” Sofia Coppola says in the story. “But I think you can be substantial and still be interested in frivolity.”
As Paris Couture Week begins–and Coppola herself serves as the creative director of Musée des Arts Décoratifs’s Bal d’Éte, we thought there was no better time to visit Leibovitz’s September 2006 portfolio, “Teen Queen”. |
