قراءة كتاب Origin and Early History of the Fashion Plate
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Origin and Early History of the Fashion Plate
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United States National Museum Bulletin 250
Contributions from
The Museum of History and Technology
Paper 60, pages 65-92
ORIGIN AND EARLY HISTORY
OF THE FASHION PLATE
John L Nevinson
Smithsonian Press
Washington, D.C.
1967
Figure 1.—Dress of Sigmund von Herberstein for the Polish Embassy in 1517. Over his doublet and breeches he wears a brocade gown lined with silk. From Gratae Posteritati, 1560. (Courtesy of British Museum, London.)
John L. Nevinson
Origin and Early History
Of the Fashion Plate
A fashion plate is a costume portrait indicating a suitable style of clothing that can be made or secured. Fashion illustration began in the late 15th and early 16th centuries with portrait pictures that made a person’s identity known not by his individual features but rather by his dress.
This paper, based on a lecture given in the fall of 1963 at the Metropolitan Museum, New York, traces the history of the fashion plate from its origins to its full development in the 19th century. With the improvements in transportation and communication, increased attention came to be paid to foreign fashions, accessories, and even to hairstyles. As the reading public grew, so fashion consciousness increased, and magazines, wholly or partly devoted to fashions, flourished and were widely read in the middle social classes; this growth of fashion periodicals also is briefly described here.
The Author: John L. Nevinson, retired, was formerly with The Victoria and Albert Museum, London. He now devotes himself to full-time research on costumes and their history.
Fashion may be defined as a general style of dress appropriate for a particular person to wear at a certain time of day, on a special occasion, or for a specific purpose.
A fashion plate is a costume portrait, that is to say, a portrait not of an individual but one which shows the sort of clothes that are being worn or that are likely to be worn. It is a generalized portrait, indicating the style of clothes that a tailor, dressmaker, or store can make or supply, or showing how different materials
can be made up into clothes. A fashion plate is related to the wear of its epoch and not to the history of dress, except insofar as the dress of a historical personage may be imitated at a later date. A fashion plate is reproduced mechanically, the woodcuts and engravings of earlier dates being succeeded by lithographs and finally by the various photographic processes of our time.
This definition of a fashion plate is broader than the one adopted by Mr. Vyvyan Holland, who has
written the only substantial book on the subject.1 Mr. Holland limited his study to hand-colored fashion plates of the period from 1770 to 1899, possibly because these are most in favor with collectors. He omitted trade and advertisement plates, believing them to be primarily concerned with the history of dress.
The main functions of fashionable dress are to draw attention to the wearer, to define his social position, and to show who he is and what he is doing. Modesty, protection against the weather, and appeal to the opposite sex, are, so far as fashion is concerned, subsidiary functions. Interest in fashionable dress goes back at least to the 16th century, as is evidenced by a popular dialogue written by Alessandro Piccolomini, a relative of Pope Pius II, who subsequently became coadjutor Archbishop of Siena.2 Piccolomini wrote under the pseudonym “Lo Stordito,” and it is not clear to what extent the dialogue was sponsored by the Academy of the Intronati, an aristocratic, literary, and social society of which he was a member. He stated that the requirements of fashionable dress were that it be sumptuous in material, tasteful in style, and borne gracefully by the wearer. Unfortunately for the costume historian, the dialogue is not illustrated.
It has been assumed too readily perhaps that the fashion plate dates from the late 18th century, but it is not difficult to demonstrate that it existed in all its essentials at earlier periods, even though its history may not be continuous. The beginning of the illustration of fashions is found in portraits, the earliest of which, either sculptured or painted, developed from images of kings and important personages.3 These images, unlike the imagines of the Romans, made no attempt to portray the features of an individual, but made his identity known rather by his clothes, his arms, and other indications of rank or position. The development of the stylized image into the personal portrait is well illustrated in the diary of Jörg von Ehingen.4 Von Ehingen, who traveled widely in Europe during the years preceding 1460, might be described as a professional jouster, who took part,
usually with great success, in tournaments at the various