Judge — February 6, 1915 — page 1: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

This cartoon by James Montgomery Flagg satirizes women's fashion, specifically the voluminous skirts popular in the early 1900s. The illustration shows a woman in an enormously billowing skirt so large it appears to contain multiple layers of fabric—so much material that the caption humorously compares it to a "grandfather's skirt," suggesting the garment is old-fashioned or excessively substantial. The satire likely critiques the impracticality and excess of contemporary women's fashion during this era. The vast skirt volume required significant fabric and manufacturing, making such garments expensive. The joke targets both the absurdity of the silhouette and perhaps the wasteful nature of the trend among wealthy women, a common subject of social commentary in Judge magazine's satirical humor.