In a few short years, the radium-factory death toll had reached 50. When they went to the dentist to have their teeth pulled, some of their jawbones crumbled under the pressure.” In fact, the radium weakened all their bones and gave them tumors. In a particularly gruesome Killer Fashion passage, Wright explains, “The radium painters’ teeth began to rot. While fashionable flappers adopted the questionable habit of applying glow-in-the-dark radium on their lips and teeth to shimmer on the dance floor, the women who suffered most from exposure to radioactivity were the “ Radium Girls” who worked in factories in the 1920s carefully painting the small numbers on the faces of swanky Undark watches and licking their glowing paint brushes to make a finer point. But the most troubling stories in Killer Fashion aren’t even about the style mavens who wore the toxic looks, but the poor souls tasked with making the clothes. Many women have heard the old adage, “One must suffer for beauty”-“ Il faut souffrir pour etre belle” in French- so like the pain of an uncomfortable push-up bra worn to achieve a curvier silhouette, death by fashion might seem like a grim comeuppance for feminine vanity. “It’s just a cool thing for you to remember.” “But just think about it the next time you’re out in a lightning storm,” she says with a foreboding note creeping up in her voice. That was a freak accident,” Wright admits. The Horrors of Crinoline & The Destruction of Human Life.” (From the Wellcome Library via WikiCommons)īut, seriously, how many women have died getting a lift from Victoria’s Secret? “In 2009, two women struck by lightning were killed because the underwire in their bras acted as a conductor. It pokes, it rubs, it digs-but does it kill? (Via eBay) Top: An 1860 lithograph print reads “Fire. But they can be in for quite a jolt, / if it attracts a lightning bolt.”Ībove: Ah, the underwire bra. For example, an entry entitled “Bras” is accompanied by this rhyme: “A simple piece of metal wire / holds a lady’s breasts up higher. Each of Killer Fashion’s 26 entries, listed in alphabetical order, includes a write-up, a Gorey-style illustration of the horror described, and a four-line poem by Wright. It’s an homage to Edward Gorey’s 1963 alphabet book, The Gashlycrumb Tinies, an illustrated poem with 26 lines describing the deaths of 26 children. In her illustrated book Killer Fashion: Poisonous Petticoats, Strangulating Scarves and Other Deadly Garments Throughout History, published by Andrews McMeel in late 2017, Wright details myriad ways fashion-from clothes and accessories to beauty products-has literally slayed people. “The danger of fashion is something that I learned about at a very early age.” “My mother never spotted anybody sporting a scarf without reminding me that Isadora Duncan had her head pop off because she wore a scarf,” says Wright, a freelance journalist who’s written several pieces on fashion history for Racked.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |