By Arabella Drysdale-Davis.
What philosopher being propounded the query, "Which are the most popular pictures in the world?" could reply other than "Fashion-plates"? Are they not rapturously studied and admired weekly by millions of women? Do they not elicit the furtive interest—not unmingled, perhaps, with astonishment—of millions of men?
"Grotesque forecasts of ephemeral plumes and deciduous fig-leaves," as a famous novelist, Kingsley, called fashion-plates, are only an invention of less than a century and a quarter ago. A lady of the olden time, who wished to learn the very latest mode in skirts, bodices, hats, bonnets, or shoes, betook herself at certain seasons to her dressmaker, where dressed poupées straight from Paris were on view. The making and dressing of these dolls was quite a business in the French capital before coloured fashion-plates came to oust them from favour in the closing years of Louis XVI.'s reign. Prior to this period drawings of fashionably-attired ladies had appeared from time to time in the magazines and periodicals devoted to the interests of the fair sex—such as the first in the present series, showing a lady in full dress for 1770—and these may have imparted to country cousins an idea of what was being worn in the Faubourg St. Germain and Mayfair—but the beau monde never relied on these.
A Lady in Full Dress in Aug. 1770
It is probable that the earliest coloured examples were produced in 1784-85. In the latter year the Cabinet des Modes appeared in Paris, consisting of twenty-four parts annually, three coloured designs with each part. In England many years before we had had the Lady's Magazine, which had devoted much space to dress, but seems to have just missed the idea of fashion-plates, although its descriptions of current modes are often most diverting. "Dress," it says, in its very first number, "is like the sunshine introduced into the designs of Titian: it animates the figures and gives them all their embellishment."
"The hoop or circumference of charms," we read in 1785, "is a most essential part of contemporary costume. The magnificence of the full-dress hoop carries with it a most noble and majestic appearance, and I hope will never be given up or hors de la mode as long as England can boast of such fine women as appear within the circle of a Drawing Room."
But the French Revolution burst into boudoirs and salons and "the hoop or circumference of charms" disappeared, and in the next few years was witnessed an entire change of style.
Here is a simple little afternoon dress for 1796: "The hair dressed in light curls and ringlets; Armenian turban, made of white and York flame-coloured satin, crossed in the front with two strings of pearls, and the ends trimmed with gold fringe; a white ostrich and a blue esprit feather on the left side; Armenian robe of embroidered muslin, the train with a broad hem; full short sleeves; trimming of blond round the neck and at the top of the sleeves; tucker of blond; gold cord with two large tassels round the waist, tied at the left side; two strings of pearls, and a festoon gold chain with a medallion round the neck; diamond earrings; white shoes and gloves."