The first 16 plates “depict ladies of the highest fashion wearing the grandest cloths that Caroline costumiers could provide. Plates 17-25 show women smartly dressed – scarcely decked out with the splendour required by the court, but in a style more than adequate for the more sober requirements of the city. The final figure, turning her back on the predecessors in the set, is a peasant woman with a basket of vegetables, whom Hollar has deliberately etched in a more severe style. The plates have been arranged with great care so that the poses rotate and complement each other” (Godfrey p75).

Several of the images have been derived from the canvases of Anthony van Dyck, as Hollar has access to van Dyke’s studio “over a period of years [with,] presumably, permission to make sketches” (Godfrey p13). At least four of the costumed women may be identified in paintings by van Dyck still extant.