Bonnet

Balch, Price & Company

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This example of a typical bonnet worn at the end of the 1870s would have been popular with youthful married women. Probably worn with a visiting ensemble, the hat features straw, velvet and picoté ribbon. The small size accented the wearer's coiffure: her hair would have been gathered into a decorative topknot with light fringe over the forehead. Balch Price and Company was a prominent Brooklyn retailer.

The Costume Institute

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Costume Institute's collection of more than thirty-three thousand objects represents seven centuries of fashionable dress and accessories for men, women, and children, from the fifteenth century to the present.

Metropolitan Museum of Art