Les Gorgerettes

This fashion illustration from Gazette du Bon Ton demonstrates how early twentieth-century graphic design inherited the caricature tradition's exaggeration and visual wit. Two female figures display elaborate neckwear—the gorgerette—rendered in pen line with selective red-ink accents typical of hand-colored periodical reproduction. The artist stretches proportions and simplified features to comic effect, showing how ornamental collars compete with the wearer's own form. Robert Burnand's accompanying text treats fashion minutiae with satirical reverence, a tone characteristic of fashion journalism that elevates style details to mock-serious importance. The work sits at the intersection of Daumier's social observation and emerging modernist graphic reduction—the linearity and flattened space prefigure comic strip conventions while retaining nineteenth-century caricature's bite.