La Mode, 31 mars 1832, Pl. 219 : Redingote à brandebourgs-Costumes (...) 1832

This fashion plate was made in Paris in 1832, using a combination of engraving and hand-applied color. These images were essentially prototypes, meant to be models for the city’s dressmakers and their clients. Look closely, and you can appreciate the incredible detail of the lines that define the figures. The printmaker has created a kind of instructional diagram. Consider the labor involved in the production of the garments themselves – the measuring, cutting, and sewing. Note also the highly constructed forms, the puffed sleeves and nipped waists. These are clothes intended to reshape the human body, imposing an ideal silhouette on the wearer. While fashion plates like these were relatively inexpensive, the clothes they advertised were not. They speak to a culture of aspiration, and the labor of realizing fashionable fantasies. They remind us that what we wear is always a construction, both literally and figuratively.