Scarlett O’Hara scandalized polite society a few times in Gone With The Wind. She opened her own lumber mill and later staffed it with convicts from a local prison. Money was scarce in war-torn Atlanta, but proper ladies had proper jobs, like painting china at home and selling it. Scarlett pooh-poohed that.
Magazines were very popular entertainment in the days before television. Illustrations in were often printed on smooth, heavy paper, called plates. (Does anyone remember books with Plate 1 and Plate 2, instead of Fig. 1 and Fig. 2?)
Fashion plates were illustrations showing the latest styles, and often showed well-dressed women in (ladylike) action.
This was printed as a black outline and dropped off at a woman’s house, and she added the color with paintbrushes. This was a way women could work at home, because it was not considered acceptable for a woman to work in an office with men.
Later, the term “fashion plate” came to mean a woman who wore stylish clothes.
You always turn up the coolest stuff. I never knew this ’til now. But the colors remind me of an old Butterick Pattern envelope.
Thanks, Petrea. The photo is from the wedding dress exhibit at the Pasadena Museum of History.
If you are just joining us, you can see photos of wedding dresses from 1910 through the 1930s in my recent posts, and they reflect the zeitgeist, the spirit of the times.
Yeah, I love history.