Dress
Unknown Artist
ca. 1870
Medium
silk
Classification
Dress
Culture
British
Department
Costume Institute
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Catharine Breyer Van Bomel Foundation Fund, 1980
Accession Number
1980.409.1a–c
Art Historical Context
Step into the refined world of Victorian fashion with this exquisite silk dress, crafted around 1870 by an unknown British artist. Housed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume, it exemplifies the opulence of mid-19th-century British, acquired through the Catharine Breyer Vanel Foundation Fund in 0. Silk, a luxurious and labor-intensive medium, was prized for its shimmering drape and sheen, symbolizing wealth and status among the elite during the Industrial Revolution's height. In the 1870s, British women's fashion was undergoing a shift from the wide crinolines of the 1860s toward the e...