The Converse in Sofia Coppola’s 2006 film “Marie Antoinette” appear among the period shoes during a shopping montage set to Bow Wow Wow’s “I Want Candy.” Her brother Roman shot the sequence, and the sneakers made it into the finished film with her approval.
Roman “just saw that there and put it in for me for fun,” Sofia said in October 2006. “When I was editing we decided to leave it in.”
Looking back in 2021, Roman called it “an in-the-moment idea of, Is this crazy?” He said it “spoke to the spirit of the movie’s thesis that these are young people.”
Even his recollection of whose shoes they were came with a qualification: “I think those Converse belonged to the stand-in we used for Kirsten and we just shot her feet.”
That emphasis on youth shaped Sofia’s approach to Marie Antoinette herself. “She was 14 coming into this situation. They were basically teenagers running France,” she said.
The film’s costumes earned Milena Canonero an Oscar on February 25, 2007. Its 20th-anniversary 4K restoration reached US theaters and MUBI on October 23, 2026.