Le Retour des Autans (The Return of Autumn)

This hand-colored pochoir print from Gazette du Bon Ton presents two fashionable women in autumn tailoring and afternoon wear by the couturier Doeuillet. Set among golden trees, the figures display the elongated proportions and art deco linearity characteristic of 1920s fashion illustration. The pochoir technique—stencil-based coloring applied over lithographic line work—allowed fine control of flat color areas, a signature aesthetic of this luxury fashion journal.

The image descends from a lineage of social observation through graphic art: from Hogarth's narrative scenes through Daumier's caricatural social satire to the fashion plate tradition. Here, satire gives way to aspirational display, yet the stylization remains acute—the exaggerated silhouettes and mannered poses subtly comment on fashionable artifice itself, documenting how modernity reshaped women's public presentation.