FASHION, London, early 19th century. - W. HEARN (publisher)

The Cyclopaedia of the British Costumes from the Metropolitan Repository of Fashions

      London: W. Hearn, May 1823 - October 1827. Numbers 1-10 only bound in one volume, small oblong quarto. (6 3/4 x 9 inches). Engraved general title, 1 hand-coloured aquatint view of the Metropolitan Repository of Fashions building, 55 hand-coloured lithographed fashion plates with images of 126 costumes by various anonymous hands, extra-illustrated with a duplicate general title bound before the start of the 7th number. (About six plates shaved). Contemporary half calf over marbled paper-covered boards, the leather on the covers tooled in blind with a decorative roll tool, the flat spine divided into five compartments by gilt fillets and an overall repeat design of various small tools. A significant portion of this charming, important and very rare bi-annual survey of what was fashionable in the London of King George IV, the most dandified of all the British monarchy. "A Dandy is a clothes-wearing Man, a Man whose trade, office and existence consists in the wearing of Clothes. Every faculty of his soul, spirit, purse, and person is heroically consecrated to this one object, the wearing of Clothes wisely and well: so that the others dress to live, he lives to dress" (Thomas Carlyle). London of the mid-1820s was the fashion centre of the world: the proclaimed leader of the fashionable Regency set had finally succeeded his father, and been crowned King George IV at a ceremony that was "cutting-edge" in fashion terms. This final decade before the start of the Victorian era was to be probably the last time when men's fashions were as important (and as eye-catching) as women's. For the man-about-town the right cut, colour, and combination were all vital components of maintaining one's position in society. The present very rare work (no copies, sets or partial sets are listed as having sold at auction in the past thirty five years) was evidently intended for the tailors and dress shops which supplied London high society, but with a decided bias: 73 of the 126 figures show men's costume (of the remainder 25 are of children and 28 women). The charming text (the perfect complement to the plates) is the work of a fashion writer at the centre of the world they are describing. The ephemeral nature of fashion means that the text has a charming immediacy "Coats, in respect to colours, the Olives and Clarets have had a tolerable run, but the Spanish Brown is expected to take", whilst also providing details important in the history of fashion about what cloth was used, how it was cut, the type and number of buttons and other embellishments, the way the clothes should hang - all details essential for tailors of the day, but also details which fashion plates alone cannot show and which would otherwise have been lost. The present volume is one of five that were published between 1823 and 1847, with a total of about 146 plates (according to Colas). OCLC lists a single example of this set, which was exhibited at the Smithsonian. Colas I, 771; Hiler p.209.