New York Fashions: Spring & Summer by Anonymous American artist

New York Fashions: Spring & Summer by Anonymous American artist

C. 1892

Color Lithograph

This large-format fashion plate presents a selection of fashionable women’s and men’s spring and summer attire in New York, including tailored suits, long skirts, fitted jackets, elaborate hats, and accessories. The central group of five women is flanked by four smaller male figures, creating a lively panorama of contemporary dress. Particularly notable are the varied textiles and patterns, from subtle checks and herringbone weaves to richly textured skirts and tailored jackets, as well as the elaborate millinery that characterizes late nineteenth-century fashion. Titled New York Fashions: Spring & Summer, the sheet was published by The West Publishing Co., Broadway at 27th Street and Fifth Avenue, New York, and issued as a supplement to the Journal of Fashion & Tailoring in February 1892. It was printed by Sackett & Wilhelms Lithographing Co., New York.

Fashion plates such as this one were an important form of visual communication in the rapidly expanding fashion and garment industries of the late nineteenth century. Published in specialized fashion and tailoring journals, they provided retailers, tailors, manufacturers, and consumers with a visual record of current styles while simultaneously promoting the commercial possibilities of new garments and textiles. The West Publishing Co. was associated with the Journal of Fashion & Tailoring, which catered to New York's growing fashion and clothing trades. The plate is particularly valuable as a document of Gilded Age New York, capturing the silhouettes, textiles, tailoring, and social conventions of dress at a moment when New York was emerging as a major center of American fashion and commerce. As both a fashion document and an example of nineteenth-century commercial lithography, it offers designers and collectors an unusually rich glimpse into the visual language of American fashion in the 1890s.

Dimensions: H 12” x 16 ½”W

Condition: Small tears on the edges