Figure 23.—Gentleman in winter attire supposedly just returned from the army. He ordered his gray cloth suit from Sieur Gaultier, whose shop, “A la Couronne,” was located in the Rue des Bourdonnais. From the Mercure Galant, October 1678. (Author’s collection.)
[Figure 24.]—Lady in winter dress of brown Florentine satin. Her petticoat is of off-white (d’un blanc un peu sale) satin brocaded with blue, violet, red, and brown designs. From the Mercure Galant, October 1678. (Author’s collection.)
From this point the Mercure Galant ceased to publish a regular series of fashion plates. Occasional articles on fashion appeared through the rest of the 1680s and into the next decade, but they are shorter and less informative. Donneau de Vizé’s adventure into fashion journalism evidently had failed, probably because of a lack of demand for it. Fashions both in clothes and in fabrics did not change very rapidly, and general fashion information was supplied by two
other sources: first, by the annual almanacs, which were often embellished by a large engraving of some important political event, and secondly, by the print shops in the Rue St. Jacques and elsewhere, which commissioned not only Lepautre, who had worked for the Mercure Galant, but the Bonnarts, Jean de St. Jean, Arnoult, and other competent artists to produce large engravings of contemporary personalities. These for the most part depicted members of the French royal family and court circle, actors and actresses, and other well-known characters, not always named on the print. A “Man of Quality” (fig. 25) is almost certainly a portrait, which, when suitably colored as many of the prints were, could
be pinned up or framed for decorative effect. It is wrong to take such a print, as some writers on costume have done, for a fashion plate recording what was worn or likely to be worn in the year in which it was engraved.
