Pan's Flute
1923
George Barbier, a leading French illustrator of the Art Deco era, transports us to a romanticized 19th-century Greece in this piece titled 'La Flûte de Pan.' A young man wearing the traditional pleated fustanella skirt sits playing a pan flute, while a woman in elaborate folk dress stands beside him holding a curved scythe. The Acropolis rises in the background against a flat blue sky, rendered in Barbier's signature style of clean lines and muted, elegant colors. As a member of the 'Knights of the Bracelet,' Barbier was famous for defining the chic aesthetic of the 1920s fashion world through exquisite illustrations like this one.