Costume Plates and Fashion Plates

Differences Between Costume Plates and Fashion Plates

Many people do not realise that there is a difference between a costume plate and a fashion plate. Fashion plates promote and publicize possible future fashions. Fashion plates are always intended as an idea of a how a new possible fashion might be worn. Some of the suggested fashions may never in reality ever be worn. They are a drawing of a designer's idea and often deliberately provocative. So fashion plates can and do often show an air of fantasy. You can read more about fashion plate history in my special new section soon where you will see images and read about names of typical fashion periodicals that carried fashion plates.

Costume plates are different in that they technically show costume as it was worn in the past especially everyday past fashions as an historical costume record. Such records of costume almost always include national or theatrical dress. Costume plates are about the fashions of the past and fashion plates are about fashion ideas in the here and now or the future.

If you want to collect fashion or costume plates some knowledge of the names of the original sources is useful and you will soon be able to read more about the first costume plates.

Fashion and Costume Print Prices

The late James Laver, fashion historian also noted that fashion plates were already becoming scarcer by the 1940s. Once moving film and movies arrived Hollywood and other film company costume departments began to snap up fashion and costume plates to enable them to reproduce costumes more accurately.

Today, it is still possible to find good fashion plates in antique shops, but more and more of us are buying our plates from internet shops such as those found at eBay which is an incredible resource for this format. It still amazes me how many have survived and the internet has opened up this easy to collect treasure for enthusiasts. In the main I feel sales of fashion plates are one of the things eBay does well with treasures to be found worldwide. It should be noted that fashion plates are different from trade plates, which were just advertisements which gave ideas on how to make up the fabric products sold by a manufacturer.

Hand Coloured Engraving from 1831 La Belle Assemblée

Prices vary and are dependant on the quality and rare value of the print. Here above and below I show two examples of fashion plate engravings bought from eBay in March 2005, through a respected UK seller known as Cabrio4. They cost me £15 for the two. Of course if many others had been bidding that day, my purchase may have cost me much much more or I may have abandoned buying the prints altogether. However these were both a very fine purchase and are in a timeframe worth collecting. The detail is exquisite. On other occasions I've paid much less or much more for a print.

One word of warning with bidding for these at eBay - don't get too carried away until you know what you are bidding on. Fashion plates can be like buses. You don't see many for a week or two and then just like buses dozens appear. My advice is that to begin collecting you just watch eBay sales of these for a few weeks if you are interested in starting a collection. Then use your knowledge to gauge the going rate noting the differences between types of plate and the variety available.

This pursuit can be an interesting and related alternative to collecting vintage clothing. It may be used as well, to enhance a clothing collection by helping you become more knowledgeable about style differences in fashionable dress.

I will be adding some more of Cabrio4's plates to the site in due course. If you want to learn more about fashion and costume plates please visit my new section on this topic in due course where more historical periodical naming information can be dealt with more fully.