A fashion plate is an illustration (a plate) demonstrating the highlights of fashionable styles of clothing. Fashion plates are not depictions of specific people, but are instead generalized portraits, meant only to dictate the style of clothes that a tailor, dressmaker, or store could make or sell, or to show how different materials could be made up into clothes.
Used figuratively, as is most often the case, the term is a reference to a person whose dress conforms to the latest fashions.
Read more about Fashion Plate: History of Fashion Plates, Costume Plate
Famous quotes containing the words fashion and/or plate:
“If thou fill thy brain with Boston and New York, with fashion and covetousness, and wilt stimulate thy jaded senses with wine and French coffee, thou shalt find no radiance of wisdom in the lonely waste of the pinewoods.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Say “Yessum” to the ladies, an’ “Yessur” to the men,
And when they’s company, don’t pass yer plate for pie again;
But, thinkin’ of the things yer’d like to see upon that tree,
Jes ‘fore Christmas be as good as yer kin be!”
—Eugene Field (1850–1895)