The aim of the dress and textile collection is to represent London’s role as a centre for the production, design and consumption of clothes. It contains over 23,000 objects from the Tudor period to the present day. The majority of dress and textiles from the 16th century to the 19th century consist of fashionable dress and accessories, while objects from the more recent period represent a broader spectrum of society.

Clothing by London-based couture houses and designers including Lucile, Hardy Amies, Norman Hartnell, Victor Stiebel, Mary Quant, Katharine Hamnett and Vivienne Westwood.The new museum coming in 2026 will be situated at the heart of the capital’s historic Smithfield area next to Farringdon. From the late 18th century and throughout the 19th, fashion plates showed ladies and their dressmakers what fashionable society was wearing in London and Paris. Styles had begun to change rapidly, and fashion plates were increasingly relied upon to suggest the latest and most appropriate outfits for different times of the day and for specific occasions. Personalized Name Seam Ripper, Mother's Day Gift Alloy Sewing Tools, Sewing Supply, Gift for Tailor/Craftsman/Fashion Designer/Mom/Grandma People attractively or unusually dressed have been popular graphic subjects at least since the sixteenth century, when the Costume Book or Trachtenbuch brought them into popular publishing. By the middle of the seventeenth century, the graphic artist Vaclav Hollar had given such illustrations new artistic status and Bosse, Callot, and de Hooghe began to group their fashionables in suitable settings. Related Articles The market for women’s periodicals was changing, new ones emerging with more practical content to appeal to the burgeoning middle-classes, alongside the magazines of fashion and leisure for wealthier readers. Over a hundred new titles appeared in Europe from the 1840s-1860s alone, bringing the latest styles to a much wider public. Some magazines lasted only a few issues, some for decades; some were wholly devoted to fashion though most included it among a range of educational and entertaining topics. The early magazines - and plates - were small, but they generally increased in size during the second quarter of the century. Plates were usually accompanied by descriptions of the outfits shown to enable them to be copied accurately, and by lengthy discussions of the latest modes in London and Paris.

Determined to make a print as a further step towards a painting, Hamilton photographed, in collaboration with Tony Evans, a carefully-chosen grouping of studio equipment for fashion photography, to act as a frame for a head-and-shoulders image, and to emphasise the ritualistic character of the fashion photo-session. This was lithographed in Milan, soft tonality and luminous whiteness being accentuated. Hamilton began building up on the sheet... collage elements which should recur throughout the print's edition. As this proceeded, the difficulty of obtaining sufficient identical collage material for an edition combined with the developing physical interest of this and other studies to change the project to one of an interlinked series of collage- drawings (Morphet, p.86).

The Artist and the Photographer

British women looked to Paris for the lead in fashion, and from the late 18th century French plates were often copied for British magazines. But from the 1830s, French engravings were themselves sent over for inclusion in high-class English periodicals. It was common practice for less accomplished engravers to then copy them for cheaper magazines, so the same dress was often seen recurring in subsequent months as it worked its way down the social scale and further away from Paris. By the 1860s and 70s nearly every English magazine imported its plates from France, and the collection contains numerous French prints that were reissued in England. Elegance Meets Originality | Luxury Green Retro Square Quartz Watch for Fashion-Forward Women, Waterproof and Timeless Publications took fashion plates a step further by utilizing a popular method called pochoir, a type of stenciling printing style that was “used to reproduce the work of renowned Art Deco illustrators, including George Barbier, Robert Bonfils, Paul Iribe, and Georges Lepape.” [1] A similar style of art can also be seen on the cover of twentieth century issues of the American magazine, Harper's Bazaar,usually with illustrations by the artist and designer, Erte (a personal favorite of mine). These illustrations step away from the traditional eighteenth century fashion plate by creating fantastical scenes in which to showcase the latest styles. From 1818 onwards women wore a coat dress variation called a pelisse-robe. It could be suitable for indoors or outdoors and was essentially a sturdy front fastening carriage, walking, or day dress.