When Marie-Antoinette took over the Petit Trianon, she focussed her efforts on changing the garden. Louis XV’s botanical garden was replaced by the new “English style” garden complete with a river and island.
One of the first interior changes Marie-Antoinette made was to remove Louis XV’s private staircase and coffee room next to the room she now used as her bedroom and replaced it with a boudoir.
Two years before the French Revolution, Marie-Antoinette decided to refurnish the interior of the Petit Trianon. Her interior designer commissioned new boiseries for the boudoir. They were the latest fashion at the time, known as “arabesque”.
The entry door to the boudoir is on the left of the bed.
On the other side of Marie-Antoinette’s bedroom, she replaced Louis XV’s botanical library with a “cabinet de toilette”, which did not contain a toilet*.
The “cabinet de toilette” was where Marie-Antoinette had her hair and make up done. Even though Marie-Antoinette deliberately reduced the staff she brought with her to the Petit Trianon— to a total of six people – two of them were hairdressers.
*In keeping with the confusing labels of the rooms, the toilet was in a small room called the “cabinet de garde-robe” (which was not used as a wardrobe) behind the wall opposite the windows in the bedroom. The bathroom visitors pass leaving Marie-Antoinette’s apartment dates from the time of the Duchess of Orleans, almost 50 years after Marie-Antoinette left the Petit Trianon.
