CABINET DES MODES, ou Les Modes nouvelles, décrits d'une manière claire & précise, & représentées par des Planches en Taille-douce, enluminées. Paris : Buisson, 1785-1786. - In-8, 196 x 128. Black half-basane with bands, boards of the old binding in marbled fawn basane, small gilt coat of arms in the center of the upper board, smooth spine, fawn title page composed from the old binding, edged slipcase (Martine Clamagirand Roth). Cohen, col. 199. - Colas, no. 500. - Lipperheide, no. 4569. - Gaudriault, La Gravure de mode féminine en France, pp. 40-43. First year of this very rare and delightful fashion magazine. It comprises 24 quires, each containing 8 pages of text and 3 figures, for a total of 72 intaglio plates by Duhamel after L. B., Desrais and Pugin, hand-colored. Some plates are printed on bluish paper. The extremely rare prospectus introducing the Cabinet des Modes to the public has been preserved as a flyleaf (4 pp., printed by Cailleau, with royal approval and privilege). Launched in November 1785 by a young journalist, Jean Antoine Brun, known as Le Brun-Tossa (1760-1837), the publication of Cabinet des Modes accelerated the demise of Esnauts et Rapilly's Gallerie des Modes, which had reigned almost unchallenged until then. "The new magazine was "more manageable in format, more assured in periodicity, more varied in text and more affordable in price" [...]. [...] In the presentation, the publisher, addressing foreign and provincial markets in particular, stresses that subscribers will no longer be obliged to maintain commissioned agents at great expense, or to use mannequins, which are still unsuitable although extremely expensive and give only a glimpse of new fashions. The magazine's issues will offer all the changes and details of these fashions. Thus, as Doris Langley-Moore points out, Cabinet des Modes was the first publication to respond to the modern concept of the fashion print as an advertising medium for the latest fashions" (Gaudriault). The binding (boards and endpaper) bears the coat-of-arms and heraldic bookplate of Pierre-Clair de Fondeville (1752-1828) and his wife Alexandrine Angélique Gémit de Luscan. The son of a wealthy import-export merchant murdered by a competitor on the road to Mérignac in 1781, Pierre-Clair de Fondeville settled in the château de Labatut-Rivière in Bigorre after his father's death. Well-introduced to local Freemason circles, he was the first elected mayor of Tarbes in 1791, president of the Hautes-Pyrénées General Council under the Empire and Restoration and mayor of Labatut-Rivière. In the medieval tower of his château, he amassed a fine collection of 18th- and 19th-century books, bound in his coat of arms, which was handed down and added to by one of his descendants, Count Louis de Germon. Scattered brown spots, restored tears on a few plates, brown stain on p. 184. Provenance: Pierre-Clair de Fondeville, with his coat of arms and bookplate.