Foreign, Technically- Versailles Ball
Last year I missed the Bal de Versailles by one day. This year I set an alarm, survived a ticketing system that crashed for most people, and discovered it falls on my birthday.
Last year I missed the Bal de Versailles by one day. This year I set an alarm, survived a ticketing system that crashed for most people, and discovered it falls on my birthday. At some point you stop calling it luck.
The Bal de Versailles is an annual costume party held at the Versailles Palace each summer. Guests arrive in 18th century dress and are given the run of the château and gardens. After a Parisian summer sunset — somewhere between ten and eleven — fireworks. Then dancing through the early hours, until breakfast carts appear quietly around the gardens as the sky begins to lighten and the party officially ends, around 8am. It is, by design, an evening that refuses to end.
This isn't the first time I've dressed in 18th century style, nor is it my first trip to Versailles. In college, I won $500 for Best Costume at a Halloween party dressed as Marie Antoinette — a gravity-defying wig full of birds, with an actual birdcage I constructed on top. Years later, I dragged my family to the Versailles gardens for the first time on my 30th birthday. We left no corner unturned; luckily there was an Anish Kapoor show happening to distract my husband from the heat. Safe to say, costume parties are my World Cup. I go all in.
The Research
I took a method approach. Over the course of the year I attended: Marie Antoinette Style at the V&A Museum in London and an 18th century retrospective at Palais Galliera in Paris; completed a course on jewelry history that included the 18th century, and another intensive on Marie Antoinette’s style specifically. I have stood in front of her surviving shoes, her mourning hair jewelry, and fragments of her textiles that outlasted the Revolution. I also rewatched Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette in addition to Maïwenn's Jeanne du Barry — two films I already love — with laser focus. I have been preparing for this evening longer than I realized.
The Costume
There is a difference between dressing for an evening and dressing for an experience — Versailles, I felt, deserved the latter.
Preparation started immediately. I knew I wanted a white dress, the most formal color of that period. I found it while obsessively scrolling at the end of March, a design that references the dress Kirsten Dunst wore in Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette — ivory taffeta, layers of ruffling, with a cascade of blush pink tulle that manages to feel both historically considered and completely alive. A funny coincidence: the dress is called the Let Them Eat Cake gown.
When it came time to choose panniers, I had one goal in mind: wide enough to rest my champagne glass on them like a side table. Between a structured frame and a softer fabric style, I chose the latter and am glad I did — it was the hottest week Paris has had on record. Historic, literally.
My shoes arrived in early June. Pearls had become an official running theme so I hand-embellished them, one by one, while watching Homeland. I finished them on season four.
Final accessories: a linen fan with embroidered cherry blossoms, purchased this year in Kyoto, and a cake-shaped handbag — a nod to the gown's name. I also hid a portable fan in my panniers, just in case.
My hair journey began with the first of many wig fittings at HOUPPE with Antoine (wig maker, new bestie). Every piece in his atelier is a work of construction: towering, ornamented, and completely committed. Choosing felt impossible.
My dear friend and celebrated hairstylist Mel joined me as artistic director, and together we narrowed it down to three styles, which Antoine would combine into a custom wig. I put the final color decision to an Instagram vote. The internet chose pink.
What he arrived at was exactly what I had in my head: pink roots in an ombré style, ending in the lightest blonde. Another fitting followed, this time for embellishment. Pearls, a crown of feathers, ribbons, flowers, and a ferronnière he all but insisted on.
Makeup stayed deliberately quiet against all that hair: clean skin, a soft pink palette, and enough glitter on the eyes to hold their own under a “required to enter” mask.
The Jewelry
Eighteenth century jewelry was rarely just decorative — it carried meaning, sentiment, sometimes secrets. I wanted mine to do the same.
During the research period, I became fixated on Lover’s Eye miniatures — tiny portraits of a single eye, exchanged as jewelry in the eighteenth century. I commissioned three: one of my eye for my husband, a birthday gift, and two of his eye for me from two different designers. I love them.
I wore amethyst and pearl drop earrings from my mom for the big day and a pink Mikimoto pearl necklace purchased in Tokyo last year, worn choker style, layered with a pearl and amethyst lariat. Last, a signet pinky ring with my dog's face on it, echoing Marie Antoinette's own love for her dogs.
The Ball
The fireworks were cancelled — perhaps a Mercury retrograde shadow. A lightning storm rolled in just as the show was set to begin, and in its place came an unplanned silver lining: early access to the party.
What struck me most wasn’t any single moment but the scale of it — the sheer production required to entertain, feed, and hydrate that many guests without the night ever losing momentum. Fire dancers, performers on stilts, something new every half hour. It worked, seamlessly, which is its own kind of magic.
My dear friend made me a lemon strawberry checkerboard cake for the occasion, fully embellished rococo style with pearls and all — a Marie Antoinette moment fulfilled. 10/10.
Next year, I’d leave later to attend the party and stay through breakfast. I called it around 3:20am and was pleasantly surprised to see a fresh wave of guests arriving between 1:30 and 2am — apparently, for some, the night was only just beginning. The breakfast carts will have to wait until then.
For a few hours, despite the laser lighting and house music, you really are magically transported back in time.
Notes from Paris, to follow.