Over
the centuries people have gone to extreme and often bizarre lengths in order to
stay in the fashion, Jane Lewis of the Surrey History
Centre, told the L&DLHS November meeting at the Letherhead Institute.
Making the point throughout that suffering has always resulted from slavish following of fashion, she began
with the Christian Dior collection of 1947 and the
era when starched petticoats for dancing caused itchiness,
rashes and ruined nylon stockings. The early 1950s also saw women wearing over-tight corselettes which
exaggerated curvy figures at the expense of comfort and brought long-term
physical harm.
This was nothing, however, compared with
what had gone on half a century before and earlier. She moved on to Edwardian times when the S-bend corset was laced so tightly around waists - see picture above - that it caused internal injuries. Starched high collars upset the skin and the
use of bone and steel also dug into people's necks.
In
the mid 19th century things were even worse. Absurdly heavy crinolines were
worn with a bustle or bamboo cage underneath the dress as an alternative to
multiple petticoats. Women had difficulty with access to toilets, often causing infections, and the crinolines themselves were a serious fire risk.
At the start of the 19th century corsets were worn so tightly that women could barely move,
while a fashion for revealing figures through dampened clothing resulted in
chills and deaths.
In
the 18th century panniers expanded dresses by up to four feet in any
direction. Cane or bamboo hoop petticoats added maybe 60 pounds in weight to clothing. At that time the use of
arsenic and other toxic chemicals on the skin also became common, supposedly
improving its natural condition but of course actually poisoning the wearer.
This was a further development from the 17th century fashion of
whitening skin with paint to demonstrate not prettiness but prosperity. Toxic
lead was its main component. Bella Donna was applied to brighten - and eventually blind - eyes; sulphate of mercury
to enhance eyelashes with horrendous results; and dots and patches of
mouse-skin to cover smallpox scars. Yet variations on this use of toxic
chemicals continued right up to the 20th century!
18th century hairstyles required piling up of hair over a frame with
use of lard and powder to maintain shapes. The use of corn-flour effectively
created pastry on women's heads which naturally attracted lice and other
vermin. In the 1780s unnaturally grey hair was fashionable and women would powder and enhance their own hair with that of
others - not always human. Some added flea-ridden dog-hair to their own! Later use of unsafe curling tongs or irons
effectively cooked hair in the mid 19th century, while as late as the 1930s,
cold perms may have curled hair to match that shown on cinema screens but also
wrecked it in the longer term.
Jane briefly covered dental fashions too. In the 18th century
people bought teeth extracted from corpses to fill their own gaps. Dentures
came later but were actually abused by dentists as late as the 1950s when they
charged for unnecessary extractions rather than working to save natural teeth
as they do today.
She ended her talk by asking what had now changed.
Fashions today were almost as bizarre as in the past. She quoted her own mother
- a fashion victim herself - saying ‘better out of the world than out of the
fashion’. Consider how much is spent today on hairdressers, designer trainers
or little pieces of froth and net to balance precariously on the heads of
wedding guests. Is it absolutely necessary to have shoes that cannot be walked
in, permed eyelashes or extended fingernails? Fashion continues its folly.