The chap-book (1895) ["The Red Lady"] - poster
The pattern
This still is filed under Iconic figure claim.
Define
A single figure, drawn, silhouetted, or posed, is the whole claim. You can read it across a street.
Mechanism
Compression into a body. The figure is not decoration. It is the sentence. Distance-legibility is the test.
Verdict
Poster scale, outdoor, packaging at a glance
Why it works
The mass of red is the ad. Lettering is placed inside that mass rather than beside it, which means the reader cannot look at the type without holding the whole figure in view, and the brand is stored as a colour memory instead of a word. The flat facets of the skirt are a printing decision as much as a drawing one - a single solid ink area prints cleanly and reads at distance where a modelled dress would go muddy. The falling white bird supplies the only diagonal on a sheet of verticals, which keeps the composition from going inert.
Steal this when
Use this when you need a magazine, a label or a cover to be recognised across a room and you can commit to one dominating colour shape. Put the name inside the shape, not next to it, whenever the shape is stronger than the name.