Paul Pohwat sent us a link to an interesting-looking exhibit that opened last week at the Bata Shoe Museum in Toronto, Canada. Fashion Victims: The Pleasures and Perils of Dress in the 19th Century explores the dangers of style not just for the wearers, but for the people who made the clothing as well. While industrialization and mass production made more beautiful fashions widely available, the green dresses were dyed with arsenic-based pigments, the mercury necessary to make shiny beaver top hats drove the hatters insane, and all that tulle and cinched corsets contorting women into airy nymphs would not infrequently cause them to tumble into gas lamps and go up in flames. The curators explored medical archives and collections in France and England, and delved into the museums’ extensive assortment of 19th century shoes and private collections searching for examples of the “poison garment,” hauling green shoes and shoe boxes to a physics lab to test for their lethal secrets. This summary borrows generously from Allison Meiers article on the exhibition which is posted at hyperallergic/133571/fatal-victorian-fashion-and-the-allure-of-the-poison-garment/
Posted on: Tue, 08 Jul 2014 05:40:28 +0000
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