Fanchon Bonnets

What was popular in the spring of 1865?

The fanchon bonnet.

Really, I just don’t get it. What were they thinking? Going from beautifully shaped bonnets through the 50s into the 60s… then…”hmm, let’s just make wonky triangles to stick on our heads.”

Okay, so what I see as “wonky triangles” they saw as “Half-handkerchief” bonnets. They were very easy to make, especially at home out of a wide variety of materials.

“The Fanchon, or half-Handkerchief style of bonnet which now prevails universally, is found by many to be “too common” – it is so easy to make at home, everybody wears a bonnet d la fanchon; and what everybody wears is not always acceptable, so the Empire shape, which is more difficult to improvise, is eulogized as “distinguished,” and adopted by a very small minority.” (The Australian Journal, 1866)

The Fanchon was accompanied by the “la tarte”, the “Lamballe” and the Manderin. All on the smaller side. Not everyone of the time were impressed by this phase in millinery fashion. “At present the bonnet is not a bonnet…. It strikes our uninstructed minds as a misnomer to call a bason of crape a bonnet, and yet it is a bonnet according to Le Follet, and belongs to the genus of “Fanchon”…. Paying for a bonnet should be a pleasure, and we have no doubt it is; we trust, though, that the “Mandarin,” the “Lamballe,” and “La Tarte” are only temporary, and that a bonnet will not become so diminutive as to puzzle a very Owen of millinery, who might be asked to construct one from a future “Fanchon”.” (Every Saturday, 1866)

We quickly see the Empire bonnet come to counter the Fanchon. This is a direct response to the dislike for the ‘commonness’ of the Fanchon both by milliners and fashionable customers. “None but those who take the lead in fashion wear exclusively the Empire bonnets. These have been a good deal modified in shape from what they were when they first appeared.”