Origin and Early History of the Fashion Plate

A fashion plate is defined as a costume portrait that records and disseminates contemporary styles rather than individual likenesses. The essay traces the practice from late medieval and Renaissance portraiture that emphasized dress as social identity, through printed images and engraved and lithographed plates, to photographic processes, showing how costume portraits, trade and advertisement plates, and periodicals documented changing silhouettes, materials, and accessories. It examines early examples where official dress and foreign garments were recorded, discusses the social functions of fashionable dress, and outlines how improved transport, communication, and a growing reading public fostered the rise of illustrated fashion magazines and the plate's full development by the nineteenth century.