This is one of four costume plates (two male and two female) that appeared in the January 1678 Extraordinaire of the French monthly journal Mercure Galant. They were accompanied by descriptive text. The plates, as the descriptive text suggested, informed tailors and merchants as well as readers in up-to-date fashions of the court. The prints were made by printmaker Jean Le Pautre (1618-1682), based on designs by Jean Bérain (1637-1711). Bérain was pre-eminent designer draughtsmen of the seventeenth century who was designer to Louis XIV from 1674 and whose work defined the Louis XIV style.

Mercure Galant was a periodical founded by Jean Donneau de Visé (1638-1710) and appeared monthly from 1677. It was accompanied three times a year between 1678 and 1692 by a supplement entitled Exttraordinaire, which described events and new fashions. Part of the success of the journal lay in its method of presentation, which was in the form od a letter addresses to a fictional correspondent who represented the largely femaile reading public. This provided an intimate forum in which new fashions could be discussed. The Mercure Galant was the first periodical to treat fashion as a subject worthy of discussion.