When thousands of posters featuring the risqué cancan dancer known as “La Goulue” (The Glutton), and her limber partner Valentin the Boneless appeared almost overnight on the boulevards of Paris, the reputation of Toulouse-Lautrec as a designer of posters was assured. This was no conventional poster that passersby would ignore. Its modern style, bold flat shapes, and strong silhouettes brought people in droves to the Moulin Rouge to see the scandalous but sensational dancer, whose real name was Louise Weber. Toulouse-Lautrec’s vigorous drawing animates Weber’s voluminous petticoats (formed by the white color of the unprinted paper) as she displays her high kick that could, according to reports, knock off a gentleman’s top hat. The electric light globes, a new phenomenon at the time, are abstracted and exaggerated in scale. Yvette Guilbert, a contemporary of Weber, described the dancer: It was magnificent! La Goulue was pretty and exciting to look at, in a vulgar way—blonde, with bangs down to her eyebrows. Her chignon, piled high on top of her head was at the nape of her neck, so that it would not come down when she danced. From the temples down the famous ringlets danced over her ears; and from Paris to the Bowery in New York, via Whitechapel in London, every demimondaine copied this hair-dress and wore a similar ribbon around her neck. Weber once performed at the Medrano Circus but her act was deemed inappropriate for family audiences.