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!
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| 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.
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| 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.
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