Illustrated fashion periodicals have been published from the 1770s. Before this point, details of current style were often shared through fashion dolls dressed in the latest trends, or through descriptions in newspapers of clothing worn at court occasions. Cabinet des modes was a French fashion periodical with hand-coloured printed images of male and female dress, children's clothing and trends in decorative household objects, shown alongside descriptive text. In 1786, following a rise in Anglomania in continental Europe, Cabinet des modes changed its title to Magazin des modes nouvelles françaises et anglaises ('Magazine of new French and English fashions'). Affordable and published frequently, it had significant influence until publication ceased in 1793 during the French Terror.

In the nineteenth century, Sir William August Fraser, a politician and noted collecter of prints, caricatures, portraits and objects associated with key figures in history, combined numerous fashion magazines together into leather-bound volumes. This, the first of seven containing issues of Cabinet des modes, consists of 24 magazines dating from 1785-6. Fraser bequeathed his collection of style publications to Queen Alexandra, consort of King Edward VII, in 1898 when she was Princess of Wales.