Origin and Early History of the Fashion Plate Part 2

[Ill.u.s.tration: Figure 26.--DRESSED PRINT, ca. 1695. The engraving of Madame la d.u.c.h.esse d'Aumont is embellished with small pieces of velvet, figured silk, and lace. (_Courtesy of The Pierpont Morgan Library._)]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Figure 27.--FASHION PLATE depicting a lady with her page being saluted by a gentleman. From the _Mercure de France_, March 1729. (_Courtesy of British Museum, London._)]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Figure 28.--FASHION PLATE, the first of the series _Recueil des differentes Modes du Temps_. The fabric of the dress on the right is a moire or watered silk, on the left a "lace-pattern"

brocade, often wrongly ascribed to the period of Louis XIII (1610-43). Issued by Herisset, ca. 1730. (Author's collection.)]

Technical information together with some fashion plates was available in the 1760s in various volumes of the French _Encyclopedie_. M. de Garsault wrote the section on the art of the tailor (1769) as well as sections on wigs and wigmaking. The engravings by Jean Le Gros (fig. 29) were of practical use to hairdressers; a similar book of hairstyle by James Stewart was published in England.[40]

The single-sheet almanac decorated with engravings of contemporary events continued to be published in France in the 18th century,[41] but pictures in the English university almanacs were mainly topographical or historical. The next development was the issue of annual memorandum books or pocket diaries, which sometimes had a fashion plate as a frontispiece. For example, the _Ladies Museum or Pocket Memorandum Book_, 1774, contained an engraving of a "Lady in the most fashionable dress of the year 1773." This appeared not very long after the first production of Oliver Goldsmith's comedy _She Stoops to Conquer_, which contains the following dialogue (Act 2):

Mrs. Hardcastle: Pray, how do you like this head, Mr. Hastings?

Mr. Hastings: Extremely elegant and degagee, upon my word, Madam.

Your friseur is a Frenchman, I suppose?

Mrs. Hardcastle: I protest, I dressed it from a print in the ladies memorandum-book for the last year.

_She Stoops to Conquer_ was written in 1772-73, and, although a memorandum book published at this date and containing fashion plates of headdresses has not been traced, it is very likely that one existed.

But before this, in 1770, _The Lady's Magazine or Entertaining Companion for the Fair s.e.x_ had begun its long career which lasted until 1837.

Figure 30 shows a typical fashion plate for 1774. A lady in full court dress is talking to another in visiting dress; behind, a third in full dress but without side hoops talks to a friend in traveling dress with a calash hood; in the background a lady in riding dress looks out of the window. Artistically such a fashion plate is of no great distinction, but it served a purpose--to give information about current fashions--very much better than the more spectacularly ill.u.s.trated productions such as Heideloff's _Gallery of Fashion_.

The 18th-century reading public became increasingly fashion conscious, and there are several series of French colored prints, the finest of them by Moreau le Jeune from 1775 onward, which have high artistic merit and have been sought continuously by collectors. Their purpose, however, was explicitly "pour servir a l'histoire des Modes et du Costume des Francais dans le XVIIIme siecle." The prints are strongly romanticized and must be regarded as a record of something between historical and fancy dress. The accompanying text names but only briefly describes the dresses and then pa.s.ses on to facetious moralizing.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Figure 29.--ENGRAVING BY JEAN LE GROS depicting French hair style, ca. 1760. From _L'Art de la Coiffure_. (_Courtesy of Victoria & Albert Museum, London._)]

In the same way in London in 1794, Nicolaus Heideloff, whose _Gallery of Fashion_ was an imitation of one of the French series by Esnaut and Rapilly ent.i.tled _La Gallerie des Modes_, though claiming that the dresses he described were real ones, seems to have had as an objective the formation of a sort of picture gallery of costume portraits of English ladies. Heideloff called it a Repository, which is what we would call an archive today, but the term came to be used by Rudolph Ackermann for his general magazine, _The Repository of the Arts_ . . . , published between 1809 and 1828 (see p. 89). The ladies in Heideloff's aquatints are all different in the sense that they are dressed differently and doing different things, but the variations are mostly fanciful (fig. 31). In fact, the Heideloff prints served to fill picture books or to be pinned up or framed on walls; they do not differ greatly in their approach from the series of the Bonnarts and their contemporaries during the reign of Louis XIV.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Figure 30.--PLATE SHOWING fashionable dress at Weymouth. From _The Lady's Magazine_, 1774. (_Courtesy of Victoria & Albert Museum, London._)]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Figure 31.--PRINT OF A LADY in a court dress ballooned out by side hoops, by N. Heideloff. The print does not attribute this fashion to any specific year. From the _Gallery of Fashion_, 1798. (_Courtesy of Victoria & Albert Museum, London._)]

It is not proposed to give an account here of the various magazines in the different countries which contained ill.u.s.trated articles on fashion from 1770 onward, since this would merely repeat material in Mr. Vyvyan Holland's book. Mention should be made, however, of the movements for dress reform motivated either by economic considerations or national feeling. Pamphlets and articles on these subjects were usually without ill.u.s.trations, except when concerned with the revival or creation of a national costume.[42] Sweden was the only country where, thanks to the enthusiasm of King Gustavus III, the wearing of national dress was more than an archaizing affectation. Dr. Eva Bergman[43] has described the origins of this Swedish national dress in a book that is fully doc.u.mented with tailors' patterns and ill.u.s.trations. As all details were prescribed by court regulations and very little scope was left for the impulses and personal choice of the wearers, the dress may be regarded to a great extent as a uniform rather than a fashion. Modifications did take place, however, and the style continued into the 19th century. As late as 1827, a pamphlet was published in Copenhagen on the same subject.[44]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Figure 32.--FRONT AND BACK VIEW of a walking dress showing that embroidered muslin was worn even in winter. Here, the muslin is accompanied by a red sarcenet Highland spencer and a matching scarf lined with ermine. From _La Belle a.s.semblee_, December 1808. (_Courtesy of The Cooper Union Museum._)]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Figure 33.--WALKING DRESS OF GRAY MERINO. Plate 38, Ackermann's _Repository of the Arts_, 1819. (_Courtesy of The Cooper Union Museum._)]

With these dress-reform books must also be included the books on French Revolution fashions, of which that by Gra.s.set de Saint-Sauveur is the best known.[45] When reading the descriptions of dress of the various officials, grades, and cla.s.ses, one wonders whether such clothes were actually worn except on state occasions, or whether they were fanciful novelties which the French officials in their reaction against Louis XVI and his court thought would be appropriate for the new regime. The intention of this book, however, undoubtedly was serious and quite unlike the caricature fashion plates often t.i.tled "Merveilleuse" or "Incroyable," which amused everyone in the early years of the 19th century.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Figure 34.--PHILADELPHIA FASHIONS. At this date caps or hats were worn indoors with full evening dress. The details of this print were probably copied from a French or English fashion magazine. From _G.o.dey's Lady's Book_, October 1833. (_Courtesy of The Cooper Union Museum._)]

After 1800 many types of magazines flourished, and the increase in the number of lending and subscription libraries and also of public libraries fostered a new reading public. The magazines had ill.u.s.trated fashion articles. Often the engravings, and later the lithographs, colored by hand, were their most attractive feature. Not that any great originality was shown; the latest Paris fashions were often adapted, with or without acknowledgment from French fashion plates of the previous season. Men's and children's fashions were not adapted on nearly the same scale. Possibly, men's fashions were more static, or confined to details such as variations in tying the cravat.[46]

Three magazines are worth special mention. _La Belle a.s.semblee, or Bell's Court and Fashionable Magazine_ "addressed particularly to the ladies" was published in London from 1806 to 1868 (fig. 32). During the 1820s the plates were of less merit, but there was a later improvement.

In 1809, the London print firm of Ackermann began to publish _The Repository of Arts, Letters, Commerce_ and _Manufactures Fashion and Politics_. This magazine had a much wider scope, and its ill.u.s.trations are of good quality (fig. 33). A special feature was the inclusion of small sample squares of new materials pasted into the text which named and described them. This feature usefully supplements industrial records of the period, which are hard to come by and difficult to handle in that those preserved are usually bulky, not too well dated, and show no distinction between fabrics made for export and those for the home market. Thirdly, from 1830 to 1898, _G.o.dey's Lady's Book_ was published in Philadelphia, under t.i.tles which varied from time to time (fig. 34).

This magazine is much more famous for its other contents than for its fashion articles; its plates, often copied from French engravings, are of low quality and rather crudely colored.

The number, variation, and wide distribution of 19th-century fashion plates has proved something of a handicap to the historian in search of reliable information about dress. Mr. Holland has studied them from the artistic angle, tracing many of the French artists, who did not scorn fashion work. The relation of fashion plates to Victorian dresses as worn has been touched on by many costume writers,[47] but the relation of the fashion plate to the fashion house has yet to be studied; in particular, the large sheets put out by wholesale drapers and textile manufacturers and the advertis.e.m.e.nts of ready-made clothing that appear in magazines all through the 19th century have not yet been studied to full advantage.

This account of the fashion plate is necessarily incomplete, because its history and development has not been continuous, and new links may yet be found. The earlier period has been treated in greater detail because it is generally less well-known, and the boundaries between the fashion plate and the costume picture are not all easy to define. The fashion plate has died slowly, the victim of the photograph showing the model wearing actual clothes and the sketch giving the impression of a fashion artist at a dress show. Through the centuries, the fashion plate has provided the link between the wearer and the maker of clothes. It has also attracted as collectors those studying both the social background of a period and the history of costume.

U.S. Government Printing Office: 1967

For sale by the Superintendent of Doc.u.ments, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C. 20402

Price 35 cents

_Footnotes_

Notes that were shown in their original location are repeated here for completeness.

[Footnote 1: VYVYAN HOLLAND, _Hand Coloured Fashion Plates_, 1770-1899 (Boston: Boston Book and Art Shop, Inc., 1955).]

[Footnote 2: ALESSANDRO PICCOLOMINI, _Dialogo de la bella creanza de le donne_ (Venice, 1540). The dialogue is reprinted in G. ZONTA, _Trattati del Cinquecento sulla donna_ (1913), but it deserves a modern translation and editing.]

[Footnote 3: SIR HENRY HAKE, "The English Historic Portrait."

Lecture for the British Academy, 1943.]

[Footnote 4: MALCOLM LETTS, _The Diary of Jorg von Ehingen_ (1929).]

[Footnote 5: SIGRID F. CHRISTENSEN, _Die mannliche Kleidung in der suddeutschen Renaissance_ (1934), pl. 21.]

[Footnote 6: Sir KARL T. PARKER, _The drawings of H. Holbein at Windsor Castle_ (1945), pls. 16, 19, 24.]

[Footnote 7: This book, _Klaidungsbuchlein_, in the Herzog Anton-Ulrich Museum, Brunswick, Germany, was edited by August Fink and published in full in 1963 by the Deutscher Verein fur Kunstwissenschaft, Berlin.]

[Footnote 8: For a general account, see J. L. NEVINSON, "Sigmund von Herberstein: Notes on 16th century dress," _Zeitschrift der Gesellschaft fur historische Waffen- und Kostum-Kunde_ (1959), new ser. 1, p. 86.]

[Footnote 9: SIGMUND VON HERBERSTEIN, _Gratae Posteritati_ . . .

(Vienna, 1560).]

[Footnote 10: SIGMUND VON HERBERSTEIN, _Rerum Moscoviticarum Commentarii_, expanded ed. (Basel: Oporinus, 1556).]

[Footnote 11: JUAN DE ALCEGA, _Libro di geometria y traca_ (1589).

See also, _Tailor and cutter_ (London, 1933), no. 68. A copy of the 1588 edition was acquired by the Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, D.C., in 1964.]

[Footnote 12: "Supplication to the King." Printed by the Early English Text Society, extra ser. (1871), p. 52.]

[Footnote 13: _Letters and Papers of Henry VIII_, vol. 1 (2), on.

3326.]

[Footnote 14: ANDREW BOORDE, _Fyrst Boke of the Introduction of Knowledge_ (1542). Reprinted by the Early English Text Society, extra ser., vol. 10 (1870), p. 116.]

[Footnote 15: _Recueil de la diversite des habits_ . . . (1562).