Les Gorgerettes

This hand-colored pochoir illustration from Gazette du Bon Ton satirizes women's fashion obsession through three figures modeling elaborate neckwear and collars. The artist deploys exaggerated profiles and silhouettes—elongated necks, severe angles, tiny heads perched atop impossible corseting—to mock the era's extreme aesthetic standards. The accompanying text ridicules how women sacrifice health and comfort for ornament, invoking King Louis XVI and historical female vanity. Rooted in the European caricature tradition of Gillray and Daumier, this fashion satire demonstrates how early-twentieth-century print culture adapted grotesque distortion to mock consumer culture and female bodies. The pochoir technique allowed bold color saturation that sharpened the ridicule.