Judge — March 3, 1928 — page 12: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

# Judge Magazine - "Studies in the Naive" This cartoon satirizes social pretension and fashion consciousness among the wealthy. The title "The lad who wore a Palm-Beach suit to Palm Beach" is the joke: a young man arrives at the exclusive Palm Beach resort wearing a "Palm Beach suit" (a lightweight tropical suit marketed with that name), apparently unaware that fashionable Palm Beach residents would wear something more sophisticated or current. The figure in the foreground, distinguished by his hat and cane, stands before a crowd of onlookers in the background who appear to be observing him—suggesting he's the object of social ridicule. The cartoon mocks his naïveté: he's taken the suit's name literally, not realizing that brand-name fashion marketed to appeal to the aspirational middle class would be precisely what to *avoid* wearing among actual Palm Beach society.