The Gallery of Fashion (1794-1803)


Last Update 22 June 1998

Fashion Plates and Fashion Commentary

April 1794 May 1794 June 1794 July 1794
August 1794 September 1794 October 1794 November 1794
December 1794 January 1795 February 1795 March 1795
April 1795 May 1795 June 1795 July 1795
August 1795 September 1795 October 1795 November 1795
December 1795 January 1796 February 1796 March 1796
April 1796 May 1796 June 1796 July 1796
August 1796 September 1796 October 1796 November 1796
December 1796 Dresses, 1797 January 1797 March 1797
April 1797 May 1797 September 1797 Dresses, 1798
Dresses, 1799 Dresses, 1800

Key Sources on The Gallery of Fashion

Davenport, Millia. The Book of Costume. Volume I. New York: Crown Publishers, 1948.

Druesedow, Jean L. In Style: Celebrating Fifty Years of the Costume Institute. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1987.

Gordon, Lesley. A Gallery of Fashion. Exeter: Webb and Bower, 1984.

Moore, Doris Langley. The Gallery of Fashion 1790-1822 from Plates by Heideloff and Ackermann with Introduction by Sacheverell Sitwell and Notes on the Plates by Doris Langley Moore. Batsford Colour Books. London: B.T. Batsford, 1949.

Ribeiro, Aileen. The Art of Dress: Fashion in England and France 1750 to 1820. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995.

Starobinski, Jean et al. Revolution in Fashion: European Clothing, 1715-1815. New York: Abbeville Press, 1989.

About the Gallery of Fashion . . .

"[S]imple dresses with their slightly rising waistlines are reflected in the most famous of all English fashion magazines, Heideloff's Gallery of Fashion which appeared from 1794 to 1802. The Gallery claimed to be a record `of all the most fashionable and elegant Dresses in vogue,' rather than a blueprint for the future; it aimed to show the taste and restraint to be seen in English costume, rather than the wild exaggerations of French dress .... The result was often a compromise between the `elegant simplicity' of ancient Greek dress, which the Gallery admired, and the English attraction towards such features as Vandyke trimming, Tudor ruffs and various kinds of applied decoration" (Ribeiro 109-110).

About Heideloff ...

Nikolaus Innocentius Wilhelm Clemens von Heideloff, 1761-1837, fled Europe during the war.

"Nicholas Heideloff, a young German from Stuttgart, was working in Paris; at the revolution, he fled to London where he published Heideloff's Gallery of Fashion, monthly from 1794- 1803. It is probably the most luxurious of all fashion magazines" (Davenport 791).

Partial Text of "Advertisement" to Volume I, 1794 (p. 1-2)

A Gallery of Fashion is a work long wanted, and long wished for, and now makes its appearance upon a very extensive plan. It is a collection of all the most fashionable and elegant Dresses in vogue.

This work, so necessary to point out the superior elegance of the English taste, is the first and only one ever published in this country: it surpasses any thing of the kind formerly published at Paris, and shews at once the different fashions invented at different periods: in short it forms a Repository of Dress.

The Publisher will make it his particular study to select those magnificent dresses, in which the Ladies appear at the routs, the opera, the play-houses, and the concert-rooms; as well as those elegant morning dresses of Hyde Park, and Kensington Gardens.

Several Ladies of rank and fashion have not only approved of this plan, but they have at the same time granted permission to the Publisher to make drawings of their new dresses, and to insert them in this GALLERY; thus the credit of the invention of the different dresses, will be secured to those Fair Subscribers who contribute to the embellishment of this work (if they have no objection to their names being mentioned). And they will find the Publisher always ready to represent their dresses in that style of elegance, and that original taste, which is so peculiar to the British Ladies.
(text above from p. 1, Vol. 1, 1794)

Partial Text of "Advertisement" to Volume II, 1795 (p. 1-2)


From p. 1 ...
"In our memory France has given her dresses to the other nations; but it was reserved for the Graces of Great Britain to take the lead in Fashion, and to show that, if they do not surpass, they certainly equal the elegance of the most celebrated Grecian dresses. In short, beauty, shape, and taste are no where more general, nor any where better united, than in England."
From p. 2 ...
"The Plan of the second Volume is exactly similar to the first, of which it is a continuation; and all the new dresses inserted in the GALLERY of FASHION are not imaginary, but really existing ones."

Partial Text of "Advertisement" to Volume III, 1796 (p. 1)

"The Publisher of the GALLERY of FASHION most respectfully submits the undertaking of a Third Volume of his Work, to the particular notice and patronage of his Subscribers; the two preceding ones being honoured with so very favourable a reception, he has been induced, in order to preserve that superiority, which the GALLERY of FASHION has hitherto maintained over similar publications in other countries, to limit the number of copies to that of the Subscribers, who, by this regulation, may boast to possess an unique repository of English national Dresses of Ladies; which, considering the limitation of copies, must become in time very scarce, and of course very valuable."


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