Sortilèges (Robe du soir, de Beer)

This stencil-colored pochoir print from La Gazette du Bon Ton presents an art deco vision of evening wear as enchantment. A woman in a pale blue gown holds a glowing orb while winged serpents coil around her in a starlit void. The work exemplifies the luxury fashion illustration tradition that emerged from Belle Époque poster art—inheriting the graphic sophistication and decorative excess of Toulouse-Lautrec and the Nabis, yet stripped of social satire. Where nineteenth-century caricature by Daumier and Gillray had mocked power and vice through distortion, this 1920s fashion plate aestheticizes desire itself. The print descends from that lineage of commercial printmaking and mass reproduction, but redirects its visual wit toward commodity and beauty rather than moral critique or political ridicule.