Le Déjeuner au Cabaret

This wood engraving depicts a fashionable woman in a tan wool coat at a cabaret lunch, attended by suited men and waitstaff. The print descends from the 18th-century caricature tradition of Hogarth and Gillray, which satirized social pretension through exaggerated physiognomy and telling detail. By 1921, such fashion plates merged satirical observation with commercial promotion—here advertising Rodier textiles. The woman's elongated silhouette and the compressed interior space show influence of German Expressionist woodcuts. The composition mocks both feminine vanity and the nouveau riche aspiration to leisure-class display. Published in a luxury journal, the image sold style through gentle ridicule: a descendant of print satire adapted for modern consumer culture and the emerging comic arts.