_This paper, based on a lecture given in the fall of 1963 at the Metropolitan Museum, New York, traces the history of the fashion plate from its origins to its full development in the 19th century. With the improvements in transportation and communication, increased attention came to be paid to foreign fashions, accessories, and even to hairstyles. As the reading public grew, so fashion consciousness increased, and magazines, wholly or partly devoted to fashions, flourished and were widely read in the middle social classes; this growth of fashion periodicals also is briefly described here._ THE AUTHOR: _John L. Nevinson, retired, was formerly with The Victoria and Albert Museum, London. He now devotes himself to full-time research on costumes and their history._ Fashion may be defined as a general style of dress appropriate for a particular person to wear at a certain time of day, on a special occasion, or for a specific purpose. A fashion plate is a costume portrait, that is to say, a portrait not of an individual but one which shows the sort of clothes that are being worn or that are likely to be worn. It is a generalized portrait, indicating the style of clothes that a tailor, dressmaker, or store can make or supply, or showing how different materials can be made up into clothes. A fashion plate is related to the wear of its epoch and not to the history of dress, except insofar as the dress of a historical personage may be imitated at a later date. A fashion plate is reproduced mechanically, the woodcuts and engravings of earlier dates being succeeded by lithographs and finally by the various photographic processes of our time. This definition of a fashion plate is broader than the one adopted by Mr. Vyvyan Holland, who has written the only substantial book on the subject.[1] Mr. Holland limited his study to hand-colored fashion plates of the period from 1770 to 1899, possibly because these are most in favor with collectors. He omitted trade and advertisement plates, believing them to be primarily concerned with the history of dress.