Fashion Plates Design Set

Product Information

Although the basic purpose of the fashion plate was to illustrate new styles and sell more clothes, their charm gives them an established place among the minor graphic arts. The majority can be found in ladies' fashion magazines which began to appear during the last decades of the eighteenth century.

S. magazines began to include their own fashion plates, although these were often derived from imported French originals.The volume in the skirt is still great and bears a relationship with fuller skirts of the 1790s shown above. Embellishment was according to the latest fashion which sometimes took its own course due to the hostilities between France and Britain. Publisher Louis Antoine Godey claimed in January 1857 that his fashion plates - hand-colored by a corps of 150 women colorists - "surpass all others. Some influential Americans, including Godey's editor Sarah Josepha Hale, expressed concern about the effect of luxurious European fashions on the republican virtues of their countrywomen, and sought to promote simplicity and refinement as the defining trait of American style. To resolve this political problem, periodical editors increasingly touted their fashion plates as original creations, citing New York City or Philadelphia, the fashion capitals of the nation, as inspiration.

During the French Revolution, the French textile industry suffered and unlike in England, the use of textile machinery was nonexistent.The best documented and most prolific artists during the middle of the nineteenth century were the Colin sisters-Heloise Leloir, Anais Toudouze, and Laure Noel-who, together with their rival Jules David, were skillful in showing the requisite dress detail in conventional evocative settings. They were pulled back by the narrow cut of the bodice and this restricted arm movement to a certain daintiness. The costume history plate of 1800 shown above, is a good example of how the fullness of the muslin shift dress was first drawn together under the bustline with a girdle. Used figuratively, as is often the case, the term refers to a person whose dress conforms to the latest fashions. The introduction of an educated middle class also allowed for a more fashion-conscious population that became devoted to fashion plate publications.

Images of clothing existed earlier, but their function was to provide information on “various forms of national, regional, military, theatrical, or court attire,” [1] and not necessarily the current fashions worn by the elite class of Paris. A drapery scarf is sometimes added to this dress, of white barege, with the ends in stripes of gold across, and finished by a splendid and gossamer-like fringe of white silk.As part of her studies of non-Western folk dress and embroidery technique, she traveled extensively in Europe, collecting original ethnic costumes, textile and embroidery examples. From the late 18th century and throughout the 19th, fashion plates showed ladies and their dressmakers what fashionable society was wearing in London and Paris. Although muslins were less costly than silks, good white work embroidered lawn fabrics still cost money. Men's fashions have been portrayed since the creation of fashion plates, although less frequently than women's. By the end of the century, the earlier romanticizing tradition was challenged by avant-garde black-and-white work, dramatic rather than representational.

Prints and full-scale patterns were sold through Read's establishments in London and New York, where American versions soon appeared.Portraits, especially royal portraits, served as the base for the future of fashion plates, as they offered a visual cue as to the popular styles, fabrics and embellishments of the time.