Graham’s Magazine, 1841

Grahams’ Magazine was predominantly a literary magazine designed to appeal to both ladies and gentlemen. It included literature, music, and fashion. The 1841 volume includes a serialized version of Edgar Allan Poe’s Murders in the Rue Morgue, along with book reviews, poetry, and articles on sports (e.g., angling and shooting). Each monthly issue featured a fashion plate illustrating ladies and occasionally gentlemen in their finery.

Godey’s Lady’s Book, 1852

Godey’s was in its heyday in 1852. This volume included a series entitled “Costumes of all Nations,” an article on Abigail Adams, and a moralistic story about a recently engaged man fretting about the cost of dressing his new wife. The steel engraving, a fashion plate rather than a story illustration, shows a fashionable white woman next to a black woman who is holding a child. Although we do not know if the black woman is a paid servant or a house slave, slavery was still practiced in the southern United States in 1852.

Godey’s Lady’s Book, 1871

Godey’s published house plans as well as music, receipts (recipes), and designs for handwork in addition to fashion plates. Although women’s clothing was quite restrictive during this period in history, Godey’s editors wrote about comfort and quality:
Ladies have so long been accustomed to wear crinolines that they really seem unable to throw off the fashion and we hope it may be long before they do, for crinoline to a moderate degree is certainly conducive to comfort.
The Japanese poplins are a thin, wiry goods, pretty to look at in the piece but wear stringy and look defaced with a few times wearing. They are not worth purchasing except in party colors where they make a handsome, cheap and serviceable dress for evening wear, as a dress of that kind cannot be worn much before it becomes soiled.

Godey’s Lady’s Book, 1885

Designs for needlework provided women with ideas for projects to decorate their homes, such as the one included in the 1885 Godey’s. One of the more interesting stories in this volume, “Mademoiselle’s Masquerade,” tells the tale of a young girl’s initial resistance to an arranged marriage because of her yearning for a dashing young Cuban man. Eventually she discovers that he was not “a gentleman” and agrees to marry the man her family chose for her.

Harper’s Bazar, 1887

Harper’s Bazar began as a weekly “repository of fashion, pleasure and instruction.” Its tabloid newspaper format included fashion, entertainment, religion, advice, advertisements, patterns, and comics. The April 16 issue illustrated and discussed spring/summer fashion trends in New York and Paris. Several pages are devoted to detailed descriptions of fabrics, ornaments and trimmings as well as dress construction and color forecasting. The bustle was at its most extreme. Harper’s Bazar did not get its extra “a” until the twentieth century.