Life, 1910-06-09 · page 24 of 40
Life — June 9, 1910 — page 24: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This "Historic Fun" page satirizes extreme fashions of the 16th-18th centuries through caricature and anecdote. The central image shows a 1776 caricature mocking exaggerated hairstyles and headpieces ("Hints to Ladies to Take Care of Their Heads"). Flanking illustrations depict absurd fashion details: impossibly tall coiffures with ornamental additions, and a 1793 dandy using an outsized parasol as a periscope to view theater performances—mocking both pretentious fashion accessories and the ridiculous lengths fashionable people would go to maintain their appearance. The scattered classical anecdotes (about Alexander the Great, George I) provide humorous counterpoint to these vanities. The magazine's point is clear: past fashions look ridiculous in retrospect, warning readers their own era's excesses may appear equally foolish to future generations. This was a common Victorian-era device: mocking historical absurdities while implicitly critiquing contemporary fashion excess.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
“ETP E* a ( a ¢ Scarce Articles but kings are scarce.” The king smiled hopes of our god,” said Anaxarchus. and ordered the money to be paid “lie in this pudding!” —” —delian George the First, on a journey to —From “The World's Jest Hanover, stopped at a vill in Hol Book,” 1826. land, and while the horses were getting oun Gara ¥ I ad S, , F Quoth gallant Fritz, “1 ran away The Proof of the Pudding To fight again another day.” hundred fl fow i Anaxarchus used to laugh at Alex- The meaning of his speech is plain 2ggs must be very ander the Great for calling himself a He only fled to fly again, Pardon me,” god. One day I y- —From the German of Ephraim nty enough, sician ordered him a pudding nic two | The pictures on this page are humorous attempts to the extremes of fashions during the sixteenth nth centuries. They furnish the most striking however much we may deplore the follies of ast not without precedent in the past TWO DANDIES OF 1793, SHOWING OF PARASOLS. Mumphrey HE MnIGHT OF FASHION IN 1796 AN INGENIOUS METHOD OF SEE- Thomas ING THE PLAY. Wr 's “History MINTS TO LADIES TO TAKE CARE OF THEIK HEADS —From a caricature of the of the Georges.” —From a caricature published in 1776. seventeenth century, comicbooks.com