Life — November 10, 1927 — page 23: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

This satirical cartoon from *Life* magazine depicts a densely packed crowd of fashionable people wearing coonskin coats—a luxury fur garment that was a status symbol among the wealthy during the early 20th century. The joke targets conspicuous consumption and status anxiety: the image suggests that coonskin coats became so fashionable among the affluent that everyone rushed to wear them, creating an absurd uniformity despite the garments' expense and exclusivity. The crowded composition emphasizes herd mentality—people blindly following fashion trends to appear wealthy and fashionable. The cartoon likely satirizes both upper-class pretension and the American obsession with material goods and social signaling through fashion.