Life, 1913-09-18 · page 15 of 44
Life — September 18, 1913 — page 15: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This 1910s satirical piece mocks fashion trends and women's fashion reform. Life magazine's "Fashion Reform League" ironically claims credit for extreme styles—bare feet on Fifth Avenue, elimination of petticoats and corsets, "diaphanous silks"—ostensibly to distract women from the suffrage movement. The cartoon shows portly women at a social gathering, illustrating the headline's joke: "Fat Ladies Now Coming to Their Own." The caption "They will wear real material which cannot be seen through" suggests that previous transparent fashions were scandalous; now heavier fabrics will be required. The satire targets both fashion excess and anti-suffrage sentiment. By attributing women's fashion choices to male-controlled fashion magazines rather than women's agency, and by suggesting fashion was designed to counter suffrage activism, Life ridicules both the fashion industry and those who underestimate women's independence.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
sag al oe Fat Ladies Now Coming to Their Own Life's Fashion Reform League Announces a New Régime in Woman's Clothe Which Will Have a Profound Effect on Everybody Everywhere—First in the Field IFE’S FASHION REFORM LEAGUE is now ac- knowledged to be the supreme arbiter of style in this country. Other countries follow in our train. The announcement which we have to make, therefore, will affect profoundly the whole American people. It is an announcement so startling in its nature as to cause consternation in every village and hamlet. The Mexican Wiggle, the Sunrise Slant and many others, it is only fair that we should give due notice of the changes to come. These changes will make } York, Paris and London gasp. As a preliminary, we desire to state that when we intro- duced the styles which are at present in vogue we had no intention of going so far. As we announced in our pro- — Oke Cushing — * They will wear real material which cannot be seen through ” situation, the currency bill, Mr. Bryan's household ex- penses and the baseball league standard are all as nothing to it. Our imitators everywhere among the small dress- makers will tremble with rage and consternation. But it has to be. Inasmuch as this League started the present styles, which have included walking barefoot down Fifth Avenue, the total elimination of petticoats, ankle corsets, diaphanous silks, and all the forms of turkey- trotting—Flirtation Walk, the Kitchen Sink, the Osprey gram, we believed that the time had come when women everywhere should make special efforts to attract the attention of the men. And so our costumes were designed to carry out this idea. We began by judiciously reducing the number of garments a woman wore under the outside covering. Our intention in the main was that this would offset the woman suffrage movement. But we couldn't hold our customers down. The barefoot cra which we introduced was rapidly outdistanced—owing comicbooks.com