page_title: Fashion plate
hierarchical_section_title: Fashion plate
caption_attribution_description: English: Fashion plate, 1860 V&amp;A Museum no. E.267-1942 Techniques - Lithograph, coloured by hand, ink and watercolour on paper Artist/designer - Jules David, born 1808 - died 1892 (engraver) Lamoureux &amp; J. De Beauvais (Printer) S. O. Beeton (publisher) Place - London, England (published) Dimensions - Height 16.3 cm Width 26.7 cm Object Type - This is a fashion plate or magazine illustration showing the latest fashion. It is a lithograph and was issued hand-coloured. People - In 1860 the publisher of this magazine, Samuel Beeton (husband of the celebrated cookery writer Mrs Beeton), first began including hand-coloured fashion plates by Jules David. Beeton also included paper patterns, a new phenomenon that, combined with the fashion plates, ensured the magazine a particular appeal among the increasing numbers of owners of the domestic sewing machine. The sewing machine itself had only become widely available since the late 1850s. This magazine's wide distribution ensured an awareness of French fashions among a wider section of society. Jules David was a painter, book illustrator and lithographer, and was well known for his fashion plates. About 2,600 of these were published in the Moniteur de la Mode and then subsequently used in other magazines, in France, Germany, Britain, Spain and America. David was also the first to introduce the use of contemporary backgrounds into fashion plates. Subjects Depicted - This fashion plate shows examples of ball dresses. France dominated the world of fashion during this period and French fashion plates were an important source of information on the latest styles and colours. The dresses have fashionable wide skirts, reflecting the contemporary popularity of crinolines. Introduced in 1856, and generally made of hoops of spring steel suspended on strips of material, these allowed skirts to expand to enormous proportions not possible with layers of petticoats.
context_page_description: A fashion plate is an illustration demonstrating the highlights of fashionable styles of clothing. Traditionally they are rendered through etching, line engraving, or lithograph and then colored by hand. To quote historian James Laver, the best of them tend to "reach a very high degree of aesthetic value."
  Fashion plates do not usually depict specific people. Instead they take the form of generalized portraits, which simply dictate the style of clothes that a tailor, dressmaker, or store could make or sell, or demonstrate how different materials could be made up into clothes. The majority can be found in ladies' fashion magazines which began to appear during the last decades of the eighteenth century. Used figuratively, as is often the case, the term refers to a person whose dress conforms to the latest fashions.
  Fashion plates are frequently used as primary source material for the study of historical fashions, although commentators warn that as they were high-end aspirational catalogues it should not be assumed that the majority of people dressed in the same way expressed by a plate.
context_section_description: A fashion plate is an illustration (a plate) demonstrating the highlights of fashionable styles of clothing.  Traditionally they are rendered through etching, line engraving, or lithograph and then colored by hand. To quote historian James Laver, the best of them tend to "reach a very high degree of aesthetic value."
  Fashion plates do not usually depict specific people. Instead they take the form of generalized portraits, which simply dictate the style of clothes that a tailor, dressmaker, or store could make or sell, or demonstrate how different materials could be made up into clothes. The majority can be found in ladies' fashion magazines which began to appear during the last decades of the eighteenth century. Used figuratively, as is often the case, the term refers to a person whose dress conforms to the latest fashions.
  Fashion plates are frequently used as primary source material for the study of historical fashions, although commentators warn that as they were high-end aspirational catalogues it should not be assumed that the majority of people dressed in the same way expressed by a plate. A more accurate way to use fashion plates for study is to treat them like a modern high-end fashion magazine or designer's shop window with only a few people wearing such luxury items.
caption: Fashion plate, 1860 V&A Museum no. E.267-1942
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