The Rise of the Fashion Illustration— From the 18th Century to the 19th Century (1700-1900) – Part 2

In retrospect, we can find that the history of fashion and fashion illustration both related to the politics and economics of the society. The history of fashion is a part of world history, and it is influenced by the world history, but sometimes it affect the world history; for instance, a policy of encouraging people to develop fashion industry was published by the ruling power of a country, so many artists and designers kept growing and made a brilliant history of fashion, which lead a rapidly development of this country's economic.

There are several examples of how the government or the social events influenced the fashion events and how the turning points of fashion affect the society in the 18^th century to 19^th century:

In France, Louis XIV supported the fashion industry and made it created economic importance, and the newspaper Le Mecure Galant (1672) supported by him became a start of widespread dissemination of fashion.

However, the French Revolution happened in 1789 let many dressmakers and tailors escape from France to England and give Germany a chance to develop its publishing industry. That is why England established many famous magazines in the late 18^th century and the early 19^th century and some of them were named in French; and German publishers spread fashion news out of Europe and became the main source of it for a short time.

Fig. 5-1 the sketch map about how the French Revolution influence the situation of Europe fashion publishing

Until the 1790s, Napoleon feared a decline in the prosperity of France, so he encouraged the regeneration of fashion industry, especially the textile. By the 1850s, Paris becomes the centre of fashion once again up to now.

The similar development also happened in England.

Thanks to the Industrial Revolution, the technique and society underwent a huge change; such as the printing techniques developed rapidly which made the publication of newspapers and periodicals easier and easier and the frequency of updates of fashion magazines more and more quickly, and the living conditions of the people developed a lot which means some general publics could afford fashion magazines compared with before. At 1830, “Godey’s Lady’s Book” became the first magazine introduced fashion to the general public.