From this point the _Mercure Galant_ ceased to publish a regular series of fashion plates. Occasional articles on fashion appeared through the rest of the 1680s and into the next decade, but they are shorter and less informative. Donneau de Vizé’s adventure into fashion journalism evidently had failed, probably because of a lack of demand for it. Fashions both in clothes and in fabrics did not change very rapidly, and general fashion information was supplied by two other sources: first, by the annual almanacs, which were often embellished by a large engraving of some important political event, and secondly, by the print shops in the Rue St. Jacques and elsewhere, which commissioned not only Lepautre, who had worked for the _Mercure Galant_, but the Bonnarts, Jean de St. Jean, Arnoult, and other competent artists to produce large engravings of contemporary personalities. These for the most part depicted members of the French royal family and court circle, actors and actresses, and other well-known characters, not always named on the print. A “Man of Quality” (fig. 25) is almost certainly a portrait, which, when suitably colored as many of the prints were, could be pinned up or framed for decorative effect. It is wrong to take such a print, as some writers on costume have done, for a fashion plate recording what was worn or likely to be worn in the year in which it was engraved. [Illustration: Figure 24.--LADY in winter dress of brown Florentine satin. Her petticoat is of off-white (_d’un blanc un peu sale_) satin brocaded with blue, violet, red, and brown designs. From the _Mercure Galant_, October 1678. (Author’s collection.) {Habit d’Hyver 1678}] The decorative character of these distinguished prints was often enhanced by “dressing” or overlaying them with small pieces of fabric, lace, or paper.[35] The finest series of such prints is that in the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York City. In figure 26, the outlines of the engraving were carefully cut with a knife, and selected pieces of small-pattern fabrics were mounted on stiff paper forming an underlay to the print. [Illustration: Figure 25.--MAN OF QUALITY at the court of Louis XIV. Engraving by Jean de St. Jean, 1693. (COURTESY OF VICTORIA & ALBERT MUSEUM, LONDON.)] In England, there was no fashion journalism or series of prints that can be regarded as illustrations of late 17th-century fashion. Some use can be made of the engravings after Marcellus Laroon, which were first sold separately and later published in 1711 as the _Cryes of London_,[36] to illustrate costume in England, but neither these nor the illustrations of English men and women which appear in general works on the costume of Europe can be accepted as fashion plates. Other series, such as the plates on the dress of Augsburg engraved by Jeremias Wolff, belong more to the history of costume than to the history of fashion.