From the exhibition
Here's Looking At You
LIFE Magazine · May 28, 1925

A single disembodied hand, rendered in cross-hatched pen-and-ink with a delicate flush of color, holds an open gold powder compact toward the viewer. The hinged mirror lid reflects a woman's face—dark-lashed, rouged, and composed in the idealized 'flapper' mode that *Life*'s covers had been refining since the Gibson Girl era. No figures beyond hand and compact appear; the joke is entirely in the caption, *Here's Looking At You*, which collapses the compact's private vanity ritual into a brazen direct address. The composition flatters the modern woman's self-possession even as it gently mocks it—a characteristic *Life* double movement: celebrating the New Woman's confidence while framing her through the lens of grooming and display.
LIFE Magazine Public domain