Travels with Textiles October 2025

It is hard to think of a greater contrast than the opulent style of the ill-fated Queen of France, Marie Antoinette, and the misery of decades of clothes rationing under Cuba's Communist regime. But this month Haptic and Hue's Travels with Textiles considers both, and also takes a look at the forgotten French couturier who helped to rescue women from corsets in the early 20th century   Was Marie Antoinette a fashion victim who came to a nasty end or was she one of most important style icons the world has ever seen? A new exhibition in London, called Marie Antoinette Style, makes a strong case for her being one of fashion's most enduring figures. It includes not just clothes she commissioned and wore, but some of the extraordinary creations that have taken inspiration from her style in the long years after her death   We also hear from a woman who lived and suffered under 30 years of Cuban clothes rationing, putting US and UK wartime rationing in the shade, and we are off to Paris to see an exhibition about the man who is credited with inventing the brassiere.