Part 7 - The Englishwoman's Domestic Magazine Fashion Plates
1860s
Fashion History
By Pauline Weston Thomas for Fashion-Era.com
Antique Fashion & Costume Plates
Fashion History 1860s
Part 7 - The Englishwoman's Domestic Magazine Fashion Plates 1869
Samuel Beeton founded two of
the most important British fashion magazines of the C19th.
These were The Englishwoman's Domestic Magazine and The Queen. Lindsay, owner of the 1869 edition of The Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine, kindly sent me these wonderful fashion
plates. These thumbnails enlarge to full A4 size.
The Englishwoman's Domestic
Magazine began in 1852, but it flirted only with nondescript poor black
and white images until 1860. Aware of the growing interest in
fashion, style and manners from the new middle classes Beeton began to
import tinted fashion plates by
Jules
Daviddirectly from Paris in 1860. Every month for the
next 25 years a fashion plate graced The Englishwoman's Domestic
Magazine. With falling sales it merged into The Milliner,
Dressmaker and Warehouseman's Gazette in 1877 although still
publishing fashion plates by David and ceased business 1881.
Last year Lindsay the owner
of these fashion plates sent me a fascinating photograph of Charlotte a
young Victorian woman whom he knew to be a relative, but was unsure of
which 'great' grandmother she was. Together we came to the
conclusion that
the date of Charlotte's photograph sitting was 1869-1871.
Imagine then my surprise when some months later he scanned these lovely
fashion plates and sent them to me. It suddenly dawned on me that they had probably been
pored over by Charlotte who was indeed following the latest fashions of
the day. Her hairstyle bears a strong resemblance to the main lines
shown in the plates here as does the cut of her bodice and the set of
the long cuffed sleeve lines.
Fashion plates like these are
especially helpful in dating photographs. Here I have removed the
sleeves from 6 of the plates above to show the general silhouette line of the
sleeve style. Obviously, there was some variation as expressed in the
flamboyance of the theatrical angel sleeve in the header. However,
in the main the sleeves of 1869 - 1871 were slim line and cuffed or pie
crust frilled as in
these examples.
I also own some of the
fashion plates from this magazine and can confirm the text makes
fascinating reading drawing the reader into a world of how to conduct
oneself and organise life to perfection in the late C19th.
Click
here to go to another
page which shows the images grey scale. the thumbnails there will enlarge
to make A4 prints for colouring in.
Use them in class situations.
They can be coloured either by watercolour or use water soluble pencils.
Instruct students to stroke the images with gentle pencil strokes then
use a lightly damp paint brush to blend and merge colours. This will
give them an idea of the hand work that colourists did to tint plates.
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