On the French Sources of the Fashion Plates of the Hungarian Reform Era Fashion Magazines

Abstract

In the illustrated press of the 19th century, the circulation of texts and images operated on a global scale. Researchers of fashion periodicals have long recognized the flow of fashion images across nations, namely the European and  verseas import of French fashion magazines, and their exemplary role in the fashion press of various countries. The  fashion images that came directly from Paris or via German media were copied, modified, compiled, recycled or published with permission by the fashion magazines of the reform era. The fashion image was related to the paper’s self-definition, communication, socio-cultural ideals promoted in its columns, and the European press market. It was common practice for the editor and engraver to adapt the composition of French origin to the local environment by changing the textual and visual elements, which thereby acquired a new meaning and became national. In my study, on the one hand, I examine the French sources of Hungarian fashion images, and on the other hand, the circulation and modifications of these fashion images in reform-era Hungarian fashion magazines: how they problematize the concept of the nation, the domestic-foreign dichotomy, social gender roles, the relationship between the transnational and the national context.