Fashion Victims

High heels and corsets are dreadfully uncomfortable but unlikely to kill the wearer. Other fashion trends were more deadly.

The green of the dress above was all the rage in Victorian times even though  the arsenic-based dye responsible for the colour often caused the wearer to suffer  physical pain and early death. Also affected were factory workers, seamstresses and fellow ball-goers.

“Crinoline fires” killed 3,000 women between the late 1850s and late 1860s in England. Women would lose sense of their circumference, step too close to a fire grate, then flames would be fanned by oxygen circulating under their skirts. Until electricity, ballerinas also routinely perished when the muslin of their tutus met gas lamps; the deaths were referred to at the time as the “holocaust of ballet girls.”

The Bata Shoe Museum's exhibition Fashion Victims: The Pleasures and Perils of Dress in the 19th Century opens June 18