Victorian Fashion Plates: 19th-Century Aspirational Styles

Fashion plates were hand-coloured images that were available in women’s magazines and demonstrated to the reader the latest styles and modes. One of the earliest British titles, started in 1824, was titled The World of Fashion, whose monthly magazine contained four hand-coloured plates with the main focus of the text being fashion advice.

Other popular titles, such as The Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine and The Queen, contained fashion advice as well as other household tips, serialized stories and letters pages. Magazines with coloured plates could be expensive, but a range of other publications were more readily available by providing black and white illustrations instead. Many of these gave the opportunity to buy the patterns for the dresses described by sending away for them by post, at extra cost.

Fig. 1.2. Fashion plate from The World of Fashion, 1852, showing multiple-flounced skirts popular during the 1850s

Doris Langley Moore describes fashion plates as ‘aspirational’ rather than a realistic representation of what women wore. They are like the perfectly airbrushed models in twenty-first-century magazines - always pristine, beautiful and showing off a perfect figure. She strongly asserts that very few women in the Victorian period actually looked like a fashion plate. As with all types of illustrations and magazines, there was an element of uniformity and artistic licence, and this could not be realistically achieved by all women.

It is also interesting to note that they would present more extremes of fashion or exaggerations of particular features than is often found in surviving dress. Waistlines are more pointed, sleeves are more exaggerated, crinolines are shown of unmanageable proportions and necklines sometimes lower than what was actually worn by the majority of women. In some ways they can be seen as the least useful of the sources mentioned here in terms of true authenticity of what was actually being worn.

However, they are still very important, as these are images which women were looking at and aspiring to at the time. Women could take the aspects they liked the best, decide what elements they liked and what might suit their individual requirements, and use them - or instruct their dressmakers to make them up into more practical and personably suitable garments for the individual concerned. Therefore, for the purposes of your own Victorian dress recreations, the fashion plates included in this book can be used in exactly the same way - as inspirations for your own individual designs.

Fig. 1.6. Illustration from The Girl’s Own Paper, 1883, demonstrating the look of the second bustle phase and the smart tailored tweed used in the central figure

And, despite the apparent disparity between the ideal and the actual, the descriptions provided in the magazines are very useful in knowing what was considered fashionable that season, and can be used to create authentic- looking outfits. They might give you a good idea for some trimmings or let you see which colour combinations were most favoured. Many will state the fabrics used, which means you can try to match your outfits to those being described, and it gives you a good idea as to what was both fashionable and available for Victorian dressmakers, remembering of course that these are illustrations and descriptions for the fashionable lady - those of lower means would have to use cheaper and less desirable fabrics.

Fig. 1.7. Fashion plate from Le Journal des Modes, showing large sleeves and wide collars, both characteristic of the last decade of the Victorian period

If you are lucky enough to find a magazine relatively intact, there may also be the odd pattern that you can draft and reconstruct, giving you a very authentic piece. In many magazines it states that the patterns are to be sent away for, but some children’s patterns or odd outfits such as a bodice or mantle may have patterns which feature in the main text of the magazine. They do require careful reading, but with measurements and large paper you can get a good idea of the pattern piece shapes, and trying to make them up can be really fun.