Orientalism and Pagoda

Pagode: Costumes Parisiennes, 1914Étienne Drian (French, 1885–1961)Hand-colored print
The Irene Lewisohn Costume Reference Library, Woodman-Thompson Collection (LY62.38.1[20])
The pagoda became the most pervasive and easily recognizable symbol of China in the West. In the teens, dress emulated the tiered form, as the shifting silhouette moved away from the body and became an abstracted tube or cone comparable to the axioms of Cubism and Futurism.

http://http//www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/orie/ho_LY62.38.1[20].htm

A pagoda is the general term in the English language for a tiered tower with multiple eaves common in China, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, and other parts of Asia. Some pagodas are used as Taoist houses of worship. Most pagodas were built to have a religious function, most commonly Buddhist, and were often located in or near temples.

In cubist artworks, objects are broken up, analyzed, and re-assembled in an abstracted form—instead of depicting objects from one viewpoint, the artist depicts the subject from a multitude of viewpoints to represent the subject in a greater context. Often the surfaces intersect at seemingly random angles, removing a coherent sense of depth. The background and object planes interpenetrate one another to create the shallow ambiguous space, one of cubism's distinct characteristics. ....wikipedia