Fashion plate

[2] Prior to the French Revolution, fashion plates were rare, and usually small black and white illustrations in annual diaries, known as pocket-books.

In fact, Marie Antoinette's dressmaker, Rose Bertin, was known to tour the continent every year with berlines containing dolls outfitted with the latest fashionable styles.

[5] As technology improved, speed of communication and transportation increased, thus allowing consumers access to foreign fashions, accessories and hairstyles.

The introduction of an educated middle class also allowed for a more fashion-conscious population that became devoted to fashion plate publications.

Publisher Louis Antoine Godey claimed in January 1857 that his fashion plates – hand-colored by a corps of 150 women colorists – "surpass all others.

"[11] Some influential Americans, including Godey's editor Sarah Josepha Hale, expressed concern about the effect of luxurious European fashions on the republican virtues of their countrywomen, and sought to promote simplicity and refinement as the defining trait of American style.

[4][12] In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Tomy revived the concept as a toy marketed simply as Fashion Plates.