Souliers (Shoes)

This fashion illustration celebrates women's shoes by designer Pérugia, featuring three elegant heeled slippers rendered in hand-colored stencil or pochoir technique. The page exemplifies the luxury aesthetic of the Gazette du Bon Ton, a high-fashion periodical that blended fine art with commercial design. The decorative text describes Madame de Pompadour's legendary love of fine footwear, linking contemporary luxury to aristocratic taste. The shoe designs—with their pointed toes, ornamental buckles, and contrasting materials in black and red—reflect 1920s modernist restraint rather than earlier excess. This intersection of art, fashion, and print culture inherited the compositional wit of 18th-century satirical prints, though here directed toward consumer desire rather than social critique.