Life, 1910-04-07 · page 19 of 76
Life — April 7, 1910 — page 19: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page presents a witty conversation between two male characters—Cecil, a poet-turned-fashion-magazine editor, and Bertie, an artist—discussing women's fashion at a hotel tea room. The satire operates on multiple levels: **The Central Joke:** Cecil has abandoned poetry to edit a high-fashion magazine staffed entirely by "manly women and womanly men," claiming women are essentially composed of "clothes—brain, body and soul." He diagrams this concept on a menu card, suggesting women's entire being revolves around fashion. **The Social Critique:** The piece mocks both the superficiality of fashion obsession and gender role confusion of the era. Cecil's reduction of women to their wardrobes satirizes shallow materialism, while his editorial position—a man editing "women's" fashion—highlights contemporary anxieties about blurred gender boundaries. **The Irony:** Bertie, supposedly more enlightened about women's humanity, remains equally absorbed in analyzing female appearance and dress details, undermining his moral superiority. The accompanying sketches show fashionably dressed women in classical Greek-inspired silhouettes, visually reinforcing the text's discussion of current style trends.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
St = 603 astronomers and inventors live for weeks without food in their observatories and experiment rooms. Bertie (smiling): Cecil! Sometimes I think you drink too much kirsch. I find women quite human under the chiffons and the sables. Feed them and they purr, tease them and they How droll you are, F. aéhionable Conversations By KATE MASTERSON 1—The Return to the Classic in Dress Scenc—The Twilight of the Goddesses— otherwise the tea hour at the Saint Anthony Hotel. Persons: Crctt—The Poet. Bertie—The Artist. Bextiz: Do not turn your head at once, Cecil, but I wish you to see a remarkable looking girl who has paused at the door of the mauve grill room. Ceci. (nonchalantly scraping his cigarette ashes into @ saucer): Do I know her? What is she like? Bertie: She is delightfully archzological, like a figure on a Grecian urn, the piquant effect being that her face is modern, her smile of the present season, while her gown, or rather her draperies, are pure Greek! Creu (dryly): Quite so! That is the very newest effect in girls this spring. Can you see her knees? Bertie (flushing): 1 beg your pardon, Cecil, did I under- stand you rightly? I—er— Ceet: 1 mean the knee-line? I'll venture there is pointed tunic or else an odd caught-up swirl fastened with Bertie (excitedly) : A buckle or rather—a glob—may I say a glob—Cecil—of jet? Yes—you are exquisitely right! Have you been studying the shop windows? Cecit (yawning) : You forget that I edit the Pink Rosette —a really fashionable fashion paper. Bertiz: Such a thing is impossibie! You're spoofing, aren't you, Cecil? A faskior. paper edited by a man? Ceciz: Not at all! Our staff is composed entirely of manly women and womanly men. But believe me, Bertie, this does not hinder us from being ladies and gentlemen. Berttr: But I thought you were a poet? Ceci: Yes—and like all poets I revered the abstract woman. The reality I found quite impossible. Analyzing the sex I discovered the individual female to be made up mostly of clothes—brain, body and soul! In thie way: (He diagrams the back of the menu card and shows it to rtie, reading) : woman Ideas—Clothes. Ideals—Clothes. Hopes—Clothes. (New ones.) Fears—Clothes. (Not having any.) The Past—Old styles. Phe Future—New ones And so on through all the vices, tragedies, passions. They are all run through with baby ribbon. Deciding that marriage vith a fashion plate was impossible, I deduced that a close intimacy with a fashion paper might be delightful. It would be like existing among the charts of a beautiful dream. Many (More.) scratch Ceciz: Ab, but you are so frightfully young, Bertie. You are an antinomian! Wait until you have lived a while longer. Bertie: I am not so young as you think, Cecil. I shall be twenty-two next Whitsuntide. And I am convinced that the girl is more important than the frills. Of course I like to study the fashions at a place like this, for even my soap illus trations must be up to dite Ceci: Then you must let me send you the Rosette. I think I have some proofs in my pocket—— Bertie: Sec—see—Cecil. There is a peach coming in wearing one of those soap-sudsy gowns that look like lathery spray. Do you know what I mean? Crcit (turning his head): Ah, yes, 1 see what you mean, Bertie. A lingerie gown. One of the most beautiful of our models. And one of the most lovely ideas in women’s dress May it survive! There is a peplum of Irish crochet that gives that straight, sitless line. Bertie (enthusiastically): 1 should like to sketch that girl, but the head-waiter would put me out. Her bat is all of scarlet geraniums, with a large silver bug— Cecit: Horrors, Bertic ! Bextie: Well, you may call ita beetle. It has nine long curly legs. A queer effect, is it not, for a nice girl to have on her bat? Cecit: The tarantula in jec and steel and gold, the lizard, the toad, the serpent, and even the pig, are represented in this spring's jewelry and ornamentation. Yes, woman's fash ions are odd. Let me read you from these proofs (reads) “Acloin is a new silk used this season for street frocks. It used to be bengaline, and before that it was corded. silk Rajah was once Pongee. Now it is Arabe. They have crosse! the desert! Changing the name makes it a new material.” Bretix: Wonderful! Wonderful! Ceci (reading): “Warts can be removed, but it takes time and_patience."” Oh—er—yes— where was I? (Reads): “The trotter skirt is doomed, except for rainy or windy days. At receptions, trains should be long cnough for the men to trip over, if they have not acquired the graceful after-dinner hop, which can be executed nimbly only comicbooks.com