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.)
In the same year, 1729, a set of eight fashion plates entitled Recueil des Differentes Modes du Temps was issued by Herisset apparently to advertise a modiste called Chéreau at the “Grand St. Remy” in the Rue St. Jacques. They are carefully drawn and show back and front views as well as indicating materials (fig. 28). No accompanying text has been found, but as they are known in two versions, one said to have been printed in Germany, it is likely that some descriptions were prepared for the export market.[38]
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 moiré 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.)
The French engravers working in England—Gravelot, Grignon, and Boitard—produced some dated portraits of English ladies which can be used as fashion illustrations. The caricature scenes, “Taste à la Mode, 1735” and “Taste à la Mode, 1745,” published by Robert Sayer in 1749,[39] also may serve as records of fashion. There was, however, no journal of fashion in England before the reign of George III. Indeed, there seems to have been no publication or series of prints to give guidance to the fashion trade in Europe in the mid-18th century.
Technical information together with some fashion plates was available in the 1760s in various volumes of the French Encyclopédie. 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]