Ever wonder where our heroines and their friends and families were seeing those iconic fashion plates?

Behold! The Lady's Magazine. There were quite a few different periodicals tailored to ladies, and there were also fashion plates for gentlemen, but the first magazine to display a fashion plate in the 18th century was The Lady's Magazine, first published in 1770. The magazine became the longest running and most popular, lasting until 1818.

The magazine didn't just have fashion plates, however. Each issue had its own treasures, so you wouldn't want to miss an issue. Some of the contents included:

• Editorials

• Fiction stories

• Fashion plates

• Advice columns

• Recipes

• Poetry

• Party planning tips

• Celebrity profiles

• Embroidery patterns

• Reader letters

• Charades

• Advertisements

• Sheet music

• and so much more!

Accompanying each fashion plate would be a detailed (and sometimes not so detailed) description of what the model was wearing. That lengthy paragraph next to the model in red as displayed in the graphic? That lengthy paragraph details the fashion plate--wow!

To dig in a little more, enjoy these resources:

Jennie Batchelor's The Lady's Magazine and The Making of Literary History

University of Kent's The Lady's Magazine: Understanding the Emergence of a Genre

Maryland Center for Arts and Culture's A Brief History of the Fashion Plate