A fashion plate is an illustration (a plate) demonstrating the highlights of fashion

Fashion

Fashion, a general term for a currently popular style or practice, especially in clothing, foot wear, or accessories. Fashion references to anything that is the current trend in look and dress up of a person...

able styles of clothing

Clothing

Clothing refers to any covering for the human body that is worn. The wearing of clothing is exclusively a human characteristic and is a feature of nearly all human societies...

. Fashion plates are not depictions of specific people, but are instead generalized portraits, meant only to dictate the style of clothes that a tailor, dressmaker, or store could make or sell, or to show how different materials could be made up into clothes.

Used figuratively, as is most often the case, the term is a reference to a person whose dress conforms to the latest fashions.

History of Fashion Plates

This method of disseminating fashionable styles was popular during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but fashion plates can trace their origins to the sixteenth century, even if ithe history may not be continuous . Portraits, especially royal portraits, served as the base for the future of fashion plates, as they offered a visual cue as to the popular styles, fabrics and embellishments of the time. Dolls were also popular prior to fashion plates, as Marie Antoinette

Marie Antoinette

Marie Antoinette ; 2 November 1755 – 16 October 1793) was an Archduchess of Austria and the Queen of France and of Navarre. She was the fifteenth and penultimate child of Holy Roman Empress Maria Theresa and Holy Roman Emperor Francis I....

's dressmaker was known to tour the continent every year with berlines containing dolls outfitted with the latest fashionable styles . Fashion plates, as they were known during the height of their popularity, were first circulated at the end of the eighteenth century in England, rather than in France, as would be expected. "The Lady's Magazine", one of the first distributors of fashion plates in magazines, began publishing in 1770, spreading the trend across Europe. In France, "La Galerie des Modes" was a pioneer in fashion plate publication, and magazines were distributed irregularly during 1778 and 1787.
As technology improved, speed of communication and transportation increased, thus allowing consumers access to foreign fashions, accessories and hairstyles

Hairstyles

Hairstyles is a title used for international editions of a professional hairdressing magazine originally published in Barcelona, Spain under the name Peluquerias. The founder of the magazine is Spanish hairdresser Lluis Llongueras....

. The introduction of an educated middle class also allowed for a more fashion-conscious population that became devoted to fashion plate publications. However, the increasing popularity of photography

Photography

Photography is the art, science and practice of creating durable images by recording light or other electromagnetic radiation, either electronically by means of an image sensor or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film...

spelled out the end for fashion plates, as photos offered a realistic portrayal of fashionable styles .

Costume Plate

Not to be confused with fashion plates, costume plates depict garments "after the event", that is, after the epoch of the fashionable style. "Le Monument de Costume" of Freudenberg and Moreau le Jeune, published in Paris between 1775 and 1783, consisted of costume plates .