John L. Nevhi.wn 



Origin and Early History 

 Of the Fashion Plate 



A fashion plate is a costume portrait indicating a suitable style of 

 clothing that can be made or secured. Fashion illustration began in the late 

 15th and early 16th centuries ivith portrait pictures that made a person' s 

 identity known not by his individual features but rather by his dress. 



This paper ^ based on a lecture given in the fall of 1963 at the Metropolitan 

 Museum, New York, traces the history of the fashion plate from its origins to 

 its full development in the 19 th century. With the improvements in transporta- 

 tion and communication, increased attention came to be paid to foreign fashions, 

 accessories, and even to hairstyles. As the reading public grew, so fashion 

 consciousness increased, and magazines, wholly or partly devoted to fashions, 

 flourished and ivere widely read in the middle social classes; this growth of 

 fashion periodicals also is briefly described here. 



The Author; foh)i L. Nevinson, retired, was formerly with The Victoria 

 and Albert Museum, London. He nou devotes himself to full-time research 

 on costumes and their history . 



FASHION MAY BE DEFINED as 3 gciicral Style of dress 

 appropriate for a particular person to wear at a 

 certain time of day, on a special occasion, or for a 

 specific purpose. 



A fashion plate is a costume portrait, that is to say, 

 a portrait not of an individual but one which shows 

 tiie sort of clothes that are being worn or that are likely 

 to be worn. It is a generalized portrait, indicating 

 the style of clothes that a tailor, dressmaker, or store 

 can make or supply, or showing how different materials 



can be made up into clotiies. A fashion plate is related 

 to the wear of its epoch and not to the history of dress, 

 except insofar as the dress of a historical personage 

 may be imitated at a later date. A fashion plate is 

 reproduced mechanically, the woodcuts and engrav- 

 ings of earlier dates being succeeded by lithograplis 

 and finally by the various photographic processes 

 of our time. 



This definition of a fashion plate is broader than 

 the one adopted by Mr. V'yvyan Holland, wlio has 



PAPER 60: ORIGIN AND EARLY HISTORY OF THE FASHION PL.ATE 



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