Le Vrai et le Faux Chic

Album with color lithography illustrations, titled "Le Vrai & le Faux Chic" (The True and False Chic), written and illustrated by SEM [Georges Goursat], and published in Paris in 1914. The album consists of a title page, 2 leaves with advertisements, 40 pages text and illustrations (of which 17 pages contain illustrations only), and 2 leaves with advertisements, not bound and kept in a blue slip case with the original white paper covers, embossed and gilded.

The book studies, through caricature (in images and written comentary), the disorder that reigns the fashion industry of his time. Fashion, SEM argues, is no longer reserved for specialists, and appeals for the collaboration of painters, artists and writers alike. Fashion is an "eminently French" phenomenon, which lives especially in Paris, although it has become a sort of vice by the time he writes: fashion has become disorganized and ever-changing due to the influence of a group of people who lack discipline and control. This has led to a number of extravagances that reflect on the irrational choices in the costumes and headdresses of women and the complicated and excessive outfits worn by Parisian women. These provide examples of the "false chic" that SEM criticizes, not only in his written commentary, but also in the illustrations that accompany it and in the set of 17 plates titled "Musee des Erreurs" (Museum of Errors) included in the book. However, SEM argues, despite these examples of bad taste, there are thousands of exquisite Parisian women who, dressed tastefully with the aide of elite designers and seamstresses, hold high the name of French fashion and help sustain its supremacy.