Fast Fashion: English and French Fashion Plates in South America during the Early Nineteenth Century

Abstract

This article focuses on the circulation of specific European and English fashion magazines and fashion plates in Latin America during the early nineteenth century. Images of fashion and clothing have been present at all stages of the development of visual reproduction techniques. Together, paper and print culture have been linked from the beginning to the notion of speed in the transmission of ideas. The relationship between paper, fashion and the circulation of printed materials was consolidated during the long nineteenth century but began much earlier. Fashion images (fashion plates, but also watercolours and drawings) formed perhaps one of the most important and numerous categories within the visual culture of the period. I highlight the role that some of these representations of fashion on paper have had in the history of the circulation of printed materials in South America, with special attention to Pancho Fierro’s watercolours in Perú, Rudolf Ackermann’s magazines and books in Latin America and César Hipólito Bacle and Adrienne Macaire’s fashion plates in Argentina.