Life — November 3, 1927 — page 1: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

# "Putting on the Dog" — Life Magazine, November 3, 1927 This cover depicts a dog dressed in exaggerated finery: a large cowboy hat, smoking a pipe, wearing a polka-dotted jacket and checkered neckerchief. The phrase "putting on the dog" is a 1920s slang expression meaning to show off or dress ostentatiously. The illustration, credited to Gill Barnells, satirizes the era's tendency toward pretentious displays of wealth and fashion during the prosperous Roaring Twenties. The absurdity of the anthropomorphized dog in ridiculous Western and formal attire mocks both excessive materialism and the affectations of the period. The humor relies on the contrast between the animal subject and the human vanities being lampooned.