Truly Bizarre Fashion Trends From History
You think the fashions of the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s were bad? All that big hair, denim, and blinding neon? Pfft, you ain’t seen nothing yet! The fashions of times long past were so awful that they sometimes inconvenienced, injured, or even outright killed people. Yep, we’re talking literal fashion victims here. Join us as we run down the weirdest and wackiest things our ancestors from long ago somehow thought would make them look good, rather than completely laughable.
Ratty hair
This one’s so gross you can’t imagine why anyone would consider it fashionable or attractive, but that’s history for you. In the 19th century ladies would wear large wigs, and in order to keep them in shape they used not hairspray — it hadn’t been invented yet — but lard.
These women wore these wigs everywhere, even to bed, so you can imagine what they smelled like. And if that wasn’t bad enough, they even attracted rats! Some people took to wearing a sort of cage over their wig while they slept, it apparently never having occurred to them to just take the disgusting thing off.
Arsenic-green dresses
These dyed dresses had people literally dying for fashion. They were one of the worst things you could wear if you were a fashion-forward woman of the Victoria era. Why? Well, that beautiful green hue came from arsenic.
Yep, the same arsenic that we know today can actually kill you. It wasn’t high-society women who were actually killed by the dresses, though, it was the working-class seamstresses who made them. While the dress-wearers might have got a rash now and again, the poor workers got cancer. The Victorian era was a truly horrible one.
Living jewelry
Wait, living jewelry? Yep, you read that right. In the late 19th century, fashionable American ladies took to carrying live lizards around with them, attaching the tiny creatures to chains that were then connected to a scarf or brooch. If you’re thinking that sounds cruel, you’re correct.
Luckily, people no longer stick small lizards to their outfits for fashion: if they did, they would be prosecuted for animal abuse. But less cruel versions of this trend persist today. Remember Paris Hilton and her “handbag dog”?
Dressing children as adults
New parents absolutely love dressing their children in cute little outfits. Maybe colorful T-shirts with a slogan on them, or a Disney character? Check out the children’s section of any department store and you’ll see what we mean.
But there was none of that in the Tudor era. Instead, toddlers were simply dressed in miniature versions of adult clothes, including the famous Tudor ruffs! And both boys and girls would wear dresses until they reached the age of around nine.