L’Arbre de science /Robe du soir de Doeuillet 1914

George Barbier made "L’Arbre de science /Robe du soir de Doeuillet" as a pochoir print. It shows a woman wearing an elegant evening gown. Pochoir is essentially a stencil technique, but its appeal is the soft, luminous effect of layering colors. It was typically used for luxury goods like wallpaper or, as we see here, fashion illustrations. Each color is applied individually through a stencil, creating a handmade feel despite being a print. The gown has a beautiful cascading fringe effect, which evokes an exotic, timeless aesthetic, but its making was far from exotic, calling upon a team of artisans to manually layer each color and create the final image. Barbier's print offered readers a glimpse into elite fashion, but the actual production involved skilled labor operating behind the scenes. In a way, "L’Arbre de science" encapsulates the paradox of fashion itself: the appearance of effortless glamour, which in reality depends on countless hours of often invisible work.