In The Ladies fashion concerns compete with political ones for editorial prominence--and win the space battle. Indeed, fashion is a political act for the ladies. The paper's message is that dressing with a class-conscious precision that establishes or, if necesary, elevates a woman's status is an art of which no lady can be ignorant. See Morgan and White on class anxiety and the importance of fashion to maintain status.

Throughout its pages, the newspaper offers fashion advice with an almost scientific precision. Hats dance through the pages in dizzying combinations, each described according to fabric, shape, and appropriate wearing situations. Each issue has "fashion illustrations," numbered to correspond with descriptive keys that provide the details to imitate the attire. The illustrations, often full-page, show women a multitude of "toilettes" appropriate for different occasions--riding, walking, visiting, marrying.

Most of the early issues include a full-page "fashion colour-plate," promoted in the masthead, usually showing two well-dressed women with the all-caps blurb "THE LADIES." These pages attempt in one visual overview to provide readers with the essense of middle-class ladyhood. As colour-plates, these additions were also an attempt to ride on the petticoats of such popular women's publications as La Belle Assemblee.

With the emphasis on teaching women to dress, very few men appear in the pages of The Ladies-- none in the fashion illustrations, even as backdrops.