[2] The work, a forerunner of Marriage à-la-mode, was intended to satirise and poke fun at the types of dress and garbs that were in fashion at the time, and the superficiality of the tastes and nature of the aristocracy in general.

[4] Also part of the company is another woman clutching the chin of a black page boy wearing a turban – thought to be designed after Ignatius Sancho, an actor and writer, in his youth[3][5] – both of whom are also dressed as exquisitely as the first two.

The black page, holding a type of Chinese porcelain figure, is a servant, and was painted in as an element of irony in the work; as a slave, he mocks his masters, who themselves bowed before fashions and the latest frivolities of upper-class life.

[1] Even the monkey standing in the centre foreground wears a flowing, cuffed robe as he examines the list of purchases made by one of the four – it is not known whom – at a recent auction.

On this occasion she engaged the services of Hogarth with the specific intent of commissioning a painting that would humorously mock what she considered to be the ridiculous fashions and indulgences of the upper class of the time, and "female adornment".