Judge, 1912-01-13 · page 14 of 24
Judge — January 13, 1912 — page 14: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This satirical poem by Carleton G. Garretson mocks the fashion industry and women's susceptibility to style trends. "Dame Fashion"—personified as a powerful businesswoman—represents the fashion establishment itself. The cartoon shows her manipulating her clients through manufactured demand. The satire works on two levels: First, it exposes how fashion designers cynically create new styles not from inspiration but from commercial pressure, deliberately making garments expensive and impractical ("scarce and come high"). Second, it ridicules women as helpless "puppets" and "slaves" who unquestioningly follow absurd edicts despite claiming to scoff at them—even Dame Fashion herself wears a shabby two-year-old gown, revealing her hypocrisy. The final moral asks readers: aren't you all enslaved by "Style"? The piece critiques consumerism and suggests fashion's irrationality while simultaneously mocking women's perceived weakness for fashion fads.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
Dame Fashion at Work. By CARLETON G, GARRETSON. AME FASHION came down to her office one morn, With a step far from light and a frown most forlorn. She looked o’er her mail, then exclaimed with a sigh, “No dame in the world is more wretched than I! “Nota change in the styles have I made for a week, And to find out the reason my clients all seek. “For something that’s new I have cudgeled my brain, And the tailors and milliners loudly complain. “ “We want something fancy and costly,’ they say; ‘Some freak that will take, though for only a day. “ “Gowns and hats that ‘twill need a small fortune to buy, From fabrics, of course, that are scarce and come high.” ’ BER MAIDS. . . oO Then the dame called her maids and said, “Scour the place For ribbons and furbelows, tinsel and lace, “For feathers and buckles and gimcracks and pins, For here’s where a startling new fashion begins.” Then she grabbed and she sewed and she ripped and she tore, And turned out a creation unheard of before. Ungainly it was, with no semblance of sense; But from Dame Fashion's standpoint ‘twas simply immense. “Tt will make a sensation, but quickly will tire, And that,” said the dame, “is what modistes desire.” The strange thing quite finished, she took up her pen, Tap-tapped on her forehead a moment, and then The description of what she’d concocted she wrote, | And headed the squib, “ Up-to-date Fashion Note.” “ The women of style who'd be modishly groomed Should know that the present dress fashions are doomed. “The latest apparel, approved by elite, Is a marked innovation, from head unto feet. “ The skirt will be fuller, the bodice less plain, And the sylph-like effects we'll no longer retain. All this and some more she in haste jotted down And sent to the fashion sheets published in town. And she thought, “How the women will part with their mon!” | Then she giggled and chuckled at what she had done. “Poor, suffering women! What puppets are they, Who scoff at my edicts, but always obey Her task at an end, her old hat she took down, Threw her last winter’s coat o'er her two-year-old gown. “My position,” she murmured, “is simply immense, But it wouldn’t last long if the women had sense!” Now you who may read this just ponder a while Aren’t you one of the slaves of the tyrant called Style? HER EXIT. comicbooks.com