A combination of sumptuary legislation, tradition, limited access to wealthy and lack of anonymity worked to render observable personal attributes accurate reflections of individuals' ranking in the social scale [in pre-industrial society]. Early industrial urban life, however, was conducive to no such congruency. Anonymity, together with a more widespread ability to consume, fostered flagrant dressing above and below one's social category, making dress an unreliable indicator of rank. ... Thus in London and other large, impersonal cities, the whole question of how people were to know anything about the men and women they encountered in public and, therefore, about how to act themselves, became increasingly problematic.
The very ambiguity concerning social ranking an identity engendered by anonymity helped to reinforce
the passion for consumerism and intense competition for status characteristic of cities. With their
increasing number of eye-catching shop windows as well as public arenas such as parks, assembly rooms,
gardens and squares so suitable for public display, cities became important advertisers for the latest
novelties, luxuries and fashions, The ongoing parade of people and products fuelled social competition
and emulation. Consumer products became the very weapons necessary for engaging in the urban battle
for status or social identity. For in communities where individuals were highly visible but unknown to
each other, they vied intensely for recognition and strove to fashion chosen identities by means of easily
perceived material possessions (Morgan 47).
[On fashion plates:]
Perhaps the most influential marketing devices wielded by the late-eighteenth-century fashion
industry were the new fashion plates, along with the magazines established to dispense them. Although
the French were the premier producers of fashion plates by the mid nineteenth century, it was the English
Lady's Magazine which first introduced them in 1770. The hand-coloured plates gradually
replaced traditional costume plates which merely recorded fashions of the past. ... The new fashion plates
were significantly different in that they were subtle agents of persuasion designed to influence what
people would purchase and wear. Thus they depicted present and anticipated future popular
styles, providing eager emulators with an indispensable guide for knowing what to wear to keep up with
the fashions. La Belle Assemblee (1806-1868), one of the more popular early-nineteenth-century
dispensers of fashion plates, contained descriptions of each ensemble presented, as well as advice on what
was considered each month to be tasteful and elegant and what passe by those of rank and fashion. ... The
underlying assumption ... was that readers wished not only to know what fashionable people were doing,
but to imitate them as well (Morgan 53).