Fanchon

Art Historical Context

Step into the elegant world of mid-19th-century American fashion with *Fanchon*, a exquisite silk garment crafted around 1857 by an unknown maker. Housed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute, this piece hails from the Brooklyn Museum Costume Collection, generously gifted in 2009 and originally donated by Margaret King Eddy in 1968. As a luxurious silk creation, *Fanchon* embodies the opulence of the Victorian era, when silk—often imported from Europe or Asia—signaled wealth and refinement among the American elite. In the antebellum United States, garments like this reflected ...