Fashion Plates From "Journal Des Demoiselles" (1850s)

If I had to pick a decade for the birth of the modern fashion industry, I'd go for the 1850s.  A whole raft of inventions started to re-shape how fashions were made (including, but not limited to, the sewing machine and the first artificial dyes.)  

Then there was the fashion press—essential for disseminating the latest styles and trends!

1853

Illustrated fashion magazines had been around since the end of the eighteenth century, but their reach was limited by the technology of the day.  Using a manual printing press a publisher could produce a few thousand copies of any issue of their magazine.   The mechanical printing press (invented in the 1840s) meant that publications could be turned out by the million, allowing for a new mass-readership. 

Colour printing, however, was still in its infancy, so fashion plates like these were usually painted by hand.  The prints were made with engravings on copper or steel and were then coloured, assembly line fashion, by teams of painters applying one pigment each.   It's not surprising that these plates have become highly collectable in their own right.

1858

The Journal Des Demoiselles began in 1833, and its intended audience was well-to-do teen girls between the ages of 14 and 18.  However, these plates depict fashions for adults rather than young girls.  They also portray very idealized versions of the fashions of the day, rather than realistic representations of women and the clothes they wore—much like the photographs in glossy magazines today!

The two I've posted here show the evolving trends of the 1850s, from the bell-shaped and be-flounced dress of 1853, to the slightly less fussy dresses of 1858 worn over dome-shaped wire hoops.

Twinsets (1940s-1960s)

A twinset is the combination of a short-sleeved pullover with a matching cardigan.  They were very fashionable between the late 1940s and the early 1960s.

Stitchcraft, October 1945

Wolsey, 1948

Stitchcraft, December 1950

David Jones catalogue, Winter 1951

Stitchcraft, October 1953

Lyle and Scott, 1957

Stitchcraft, August 1960

Braemar, 1960

Hogg of Hawick, 1961

Ballantyne, 1963

Like so many things, the twinset was swept away by the "youthquake" of the mid- to late sixties.  Indeed the phrase, "twinset and pearls" became synonymous for a certain kind of middle-class, middle-aged conservatism—the very reverse of trendy!

In recent years, however, it has been making a comeback...

"Femina" (March 1908)

Femina was a French women's magazine that ran from 1901 to 1954 (with interruptions and a change of ownership).  Here we have the March 1908 "special number", showcasing the coming modes for Spring and Summer.

Beginning with the magazine's coloured centre spread, we see a group of ladies dressed for the races at Longchamp.   For women, Longchamp was as much about looking at and showing off the fashions as watching the races.  Around this time fashion designers started sending models to the racecourse to parade in their latest and most daring creations.

Next, a selection of evening dresses.  On the left and the right, dinner dresses.  In the centre a ball gown.

Some day dresses.

Coats—for the evening on the left and right, and for day in the centre.

And lastly, hats.  They are not yet quite as large as they were to become in the early 1910s, but they're getting there.  Laden with trimmings they would have been skewered to their wearers' hair with long hatpins.  The hairstyles themselves would have been elaborate confections dressed over pads with additional false hair to make them seem thicker and bulkier.

So in summary, here we have a selection of extravagant (even for the era) clothes, obviously intended to be worn by wealthy women with busy social lives (the sheer number of evening fashions guarantees that).  I'm not sure how many of Femina's readers would have actually worn these styles, and how many just looked and sighed in envy!

"...By Irene Castle" (Ladies' Home Journal, July 1919)

Shortly before the Great War the world—or at least the western part of it—went dance crazy.   Suddenly young moderns threw out all the staid waltzes and polkas of their parents' generation, and started dancing the Bunny Hug and the Turkey Trot instead.

With the world's dance floors shaking to the beat of ragtime, it's not surprising that professional dancers would get into the act.  The best known were a young married couple named Vernon and Irene Castle.  They made their debut in Paris in 1911, and by 1912 had moved across the Atlantic, appearing in nightclubs and cafes and eventually on Broadway and in the movies. 

They were young and famous and, above all, they were modern.

Irene, in particular, was a trendsetter.  She cut her hair (it became known as the "Castle bob"!) and ditched her corsets years before either thing became generally fashionable.  She adopted a new, more relaxed stance, and when she moved she strode instead of mincing.  In short, she anticipated the young and active style of the Roaring Twenties by nearly a decade.

  

It's not surprising that she gained a lot of imitators. (One of them was a young Gloria Swanson who showed up at the gates of Essenay Studios in 1914 wearing a checked skirt made from an "Irene Castle Pattern".)  By the 1920s it was possible to buy ready-to-wear "Irene Castle Models".  

Irene's own clothes were mostly designed in collaboration between her and the English couturiére "Lucile".

This article, from the Ladies' Home Journal, shows her posing in her "Summer clothes for a trip southward".  The magazine goes on to praise her reputation as a good dresser:

..."won by wearing clothes of extreme simplicity.  She has sedulously avoided the bizarre and the conspicuously striking, and shown a decided preference for styles betraying in every line exquisite refinement and girlish charm."

To modern eyes, many of these clothes in "pink Georgette crepe" and "Normandy Valenciennes lace" seem the very reverse of simple!

Vernon and Irene's partnership came to an end with World War I.  Vernon, a British citizen, left to join the Royal Air Force and died in 1918.  Irene continued to dance with other partners, and acted in the silent movies.  Alas, her career never quite hit the heights it did before the war.  She and her husband, however, were commemorated in 1939 in a movie starring another famous dancing partnership - "The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle", with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.