 The majority can be found in ladies' fashion magazines which began to appear during the last decades of the eighteenth century.Used figuratively, as is often the case, the term refers to a person whose dress conforms to the latest fashions.Fashion plates are frequently used as primary source material for the study of historical fashions, although commentators warn that as they were high-end aspirational catalogues it should not be assumed that the majority of people dressed in the same way expressed by a plate.