Life — May 20, 1915 — page 2: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

# Analysis This is **not a political cartoon or satire—it's a product advertisement** for Colgate's Perfumes, appearing in Life magazine. The ad describes a blind taste-test conducted with 103 women comparing six numbered perfume bottles. Three were imported foreign scents; three were domestic Colgate products (Florient, Splendor, Eclat). The advertisement's rhetorical point: when women judged fragrances by scent alone—without brand labels influencing them—Colgate's domestic perfumes outperformed expensive imports. This was a common early-20th-century advertising strategy: claiming scientific objectivity to challenge consumers' assumptions that foreign luxury goods were inherently superior to American products. The ad invites readers to conduct their own test using provided materials for 2 cents postage.