Browse Items (488 total)

In today’s age, it is crazy to think that people years ago were unable to get a wide array of information at the touch of a button. Fashion has always been a crucial part of society and has been incorporated into everyone's lifetime. Today to get…

Throughout the history of human dress, there have been many different sources expressing the attire of the time, from art and sculpture to modern magazines. In the late eighteenth century we saw the emergence of a new source called fashions plates.…

Fashion plates found their origin in the late 16th century and gained popularity throughout the 18th and 19th centuries. A fashion plate is a costume portrait that indicates fashion styles for men and women. Fashion plates were typically finely made…

Fashion plates are the equivalent of today's fashion magazines, given that the need for paper magazines is minimal in this digital age. In the past, fashion plates became more popular as styles evolved more rapidly. The National Portrait Gallery…

Rapidly changing styles created a need for fashion plates as people needed new ways to keep up with the latest in fashion. In the late 1700s and into the 1800s, “fashion plates showed ladies and their dressmakers what fashionable society was wearing…

Fashion plates serve as windows into the past, offering detailed glimpses of the styles and trends of bygone eras. The June 1827 edition of The Lady's Monthly Museum not only adds to the fashion plates in the Historic Textile and Costume Collection,…

This single-breasted vest, of a black satin weave, has a shawl collar, and six buttons covered with the same fabric as the vest front. The black fabric has a floral design embossed along the collar and front where it could be seen. Two pockets are…

This vest belonged to the father of the donor, Ray S. Oatly, Jr. Her grandmother's wedding dress, dated to 1801 or 1802, was in the same donation. Ray Jr. was her youngest son, and he would have worn the vest as a young man, which suggests that it…

This dark blue silk satin vest was constructed in the early nineteenth century, around the year 1810. Made with a undyed and unbleached linen back and the satin front lined with linen, the double-breasted vest has six sets of small covered buttons…

In the nineteenth century, men wore vests under a coat or jacket, be it a tailcoat, frock coat, morning coat, or sack coat. Worn over a shirt, the garment was a staple for all men no matter the occasion or occupation. This vest is made from a…