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.)
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 degagée, 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 Sex 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 illustrated productions such as Heideloff’s Gallery of Fashion.
