When Fashion Kills, an interview with Dr. Alison Matthews David

What do you get when you take two childhood friends with the passion for unexplored history and a whole lot of booze? You get us! Queen's podcast! And here at Queens, we are spilling the tea on all kinds of women from history. From New Orleans, Voodoo Queen, Marie Levo, to Marie Antoinette, and everything in between. Each queen is paired with a cocktail recipe that will totally get you in the mood to hear the fun, dramatic, and juicy stories of fascinating women from history. Listen wherever you get your podcasts. Cheers! [Music] With over 7 billion people in the world, we all have one thing in common. Every day, we all get dressed. Welcome to Dressed, the history of fashion. A podcast where we explore the who-what-when of why we wear. We are fashion historians and your hosts, Apo Callahan, and Cassidy Zachary. Well, April, fashion isn't all about pretty clothes. No, it is not. In fact, sometimes it can be downright monstrous. Can and tomorrow is Halloween. And in honor of everyone's favorite creepy, crawly holiday, we thought it only appropriate that we should do something, well, decidedly a bit morbid. Yes, which in the case of today's episode means that we are looking at the history of killer fashion. And that is not killer in its figurative sense of fabulousness. This episode is about fashion that kills literally. And be worn dress listeners. This episode is not for the faint of heart. We are going to get into some shockingly gruesome subject matter with our guest today, Dr. Alison Matthews, David, and author of the book, Fashion Victims, The Dangerous of Dress, Past and Present. Dr. David is an associate professor in the School of Fashion at Ryerson University in Toronto. We are so thrilled to have you here today. Thank you so much. Welcome to Dressed. Welcome. Thank you. So in your books intro, you write that clothing in its most basic and fundamental purpose is meant to protect us. And it's always with us almost as this lifelong companion. But as you also point out throughout history, this trusted friend has betrayed and harmed us. Your book is an incredible feat of research and it is quite fascinating, but I have to know what led you to such a macabre subject matter. That's a very good question. I guess there's the answer to that is both personal and I suppose professional. The personal context is that I grew up as the daughter of a professional photographer. And so my father used our home, our family home, as his both his studio, but also his dark room. So I grew up kind of surrounded by dangerous chemicals in this sort of domestic environment that you think of as a safe space, but in fact, which like many textile workers later contained things that were potentially harmful to human health. So this kind of contrast between the safe, the secure, the domestic, and the kind of chemicals used to transform, you know, to kind of turn this posing session into a finished, retouched, beautiful photograph that was then kind of used as publicity. Really, I think stuck with me into my adult life. And can you tell us a little bit about your background and what is your academic history? Sure. This project, the genesis of this project also came about. I started out studying classics in art history and then I kind of in my doctoral work at Stanford, I really got interested in material culture because there were lots of people studying American art. And I had always studied European stuff. So we were taught, you know, great paintings. But actually studying material culture just these sort of humble everyday objects of furniture and silver and trade cards and things like that got me thinking about, oh well, maybe I can study dress. And I wrote a paper from my supervisor on Crinnellins, surprisingly, in Paris in the 1860s and I thought, okay, this is where I'm going and I just sort of switched over to studying dress and I've never, never regretted it. Although I had a lot of learning to do because I never, I wasn't really taught it. So during my thesis, I spent four years in Paris and I really sort of learned about it. And then my first job was at Winchester School of Art, where I had some amazing mentors and our field trips were up to Manchester with the master's students. And that's where I really got thinking about this project because we visited the Museum of Science and Industry and they showed us all of the things that happened during the early industrial revolution with cotton and people getting tuberculosis from passing shuttles to them, from one to the other, people going deaf and having their own sign language in these cotton factories. And so these satanic mills really got me thinking about the human cost that these passions had. Yeah. And your book talks a lot about that and we're going to just dig right in because we've talked about it before on dress, but making that connection between hygiene and germ transmission, which you just spoke to, was a long time coming for Western civilization. And in one place in which disease often resided was in dirty and unwashed clothing. So can you speak specifically to the connection between lice and typhus and its role in not only the death of Napoleon's grand army in 1812, but also the role of lice or kudis in the uniforms of soldiers during World War I. I think many people are familiar with this term kudis, but I don't think I know I certainly didn't know the origin until reading your book. I didn't either actually. I found so many interesting links that I grew up playing tag and being immunized for you know, you've got kudis. And I had no idea that it came from that, from, and also feeling lousy, is comes from feeling tired and like, lousy infected with lice. So, but I guess as a dress historian, I started thinking about the links that this had. I mean, we all know also about headlice now that's still obviously a problem, you know, when my kids come home from school with headlice. But we think less about body lice. There are several different kinds of lice and body lice were lice that lived especially in the seams of clothing. If you couldn't wash your clothes, and obviously there were situations, many situations before modern washing machines have made it so convenient to wash our clothes, where people wore dirty clothing. I mean, even in World War One and the trenches, they advise, you know, soldiers should have a change of clothes once a week. So even, you know, by our standards, where we are able to especially wash undergarments all the time, many people were exposed to this risk and a soldier on campaign. There were long dresses that came along, but it wasn't guaranteed that you'd have clean water or that you'd be able to launder your undergarments very often at all in these situations. And those wool uniforms that they're wearing too, right? It's residing in these uniforms that you can't necessarily wash? Exactly. We've, you know, most of our textiles now are washable, but again, yes, one of the kind of real threats or perceived threats was wool and clothing that, as you say, that you couldn't easily wash and water, it would shrink. And you would, you know, maybe beat it or brush it, but that wouldn't get rid of the light. So, you know, people, even I've read medieval descriptions of people physically picking out the little lights one by one, by hand, in order to try and delouse these garments. So it was a really persistent problem. And in the army of Napoleon, they've done archaeological excavations in Vilnius. And so this is where many of the troops died and they've actually tested soldiers' tooth pulp, the skeletons that were found in 1812 from the retreat from Russia during that war. Many of them had what was called trench fever or typhus. So, and they also even found, tried to excavate the lice and they tested the lice which still had these parasites. And so they've, they've actually have archaeological evidence that this was a really dangerous disease for the soldiers. And I have to say that my sister is actually an epidemiologist. And I immediately text her after reading her book and I said, did you know that they're historical epidemiologists who go back throughout history and study disease and extract disease? I think I thought that was so fascinating. Me too. I think DNA, whether it's in criminal investigations or historical investigations can reveal so much that it was hidden to us. And I think you write in your book that in the early 20th century, the connection between lice and typhus was finally made and that wasn't the pre-World War I era. But throughout the war, they kind of went to these extreme measures to try to, you know, they're using chemicals to essentially get the uniforms clear of this lice and that wasn't any help either, was it? Well, it's hard to really tell. I've read also, they were doing all sorts of experiments. Niko figured out a French researcher, figured out the connection between typhus and lice in 1908. So quite late, but before World War I. And so they were doing all sorts of tests. I didn't get to write about all of it, but I have all these documents. They would actually put little attachments of lice onto people's legs to see how they would bite and all sorts of things and they were trying to, you know, figure out how to protect soldiers. But I thought it fascinating that, you know, here's this one harm and they use another harmful substance or substances. They recommend all sorts of, you know, because this is the World War I is the era of the first gas warfare. So they recommend using the chemicals that were used to gas soldiers to fumigate clothing and get rid of the lice, which may, on the one hand, have been effective. But as I mentioned with, you know, clothing is supposed to protect you from, you know, from this, but clothing also comes into contact with our skin. So I can't imagine wearing these, you know, pickrick acid or hydrogen cyanide, these really toxic substances next to the skin where it was very safe either. Yeah, I can't imagine that either. So, life was not the only danger lurking in people's war droves. And today we live in a largely hatless society, although I will say hats have been making a comeback as of late. But for centuries, hats were not only a ubiquitous fashion statement for men and women. They're a part of a social custom that was synonymous with one's respectability. You would never leave your house without one. And yet, Allison, as you make explicitly clear in your book, lurking in this familiar companion was poison. Can you please tell us about the hidden dangers of men's hats specifically of the 19th century? And one that was most famously immortalized in Lewis Carroll's famous character, the Mad Hatter? Yes, I really-- I've always been fascinated by Allison Wunderland and the Mad Hatter with his wonderful tea party. And it was really, really interesting to see that when I started to study this as a larger historical phenomenon that the Mad Hatter-- who's-- it's controversial whether or not he's mad because of mercury poisoning, because that wasn't widely known. Doctors knew it, but the general public didn't. So there's still debate on that. But what there's no debate on is that they're really mercury poisoning was a problem for hatters for over 200 years. They were chronically poisoned by the hats that they made, the fashionable hats, mostly fur felt hats for men and some for women as well. And so he's kind of this very innocuous, wonderful whimsical figure, but the reality of mercury poisoning from-- for the hatters that made these hats was horrific and extended. And so the story of it, really, is that, yes, as you mentioned, hats you would never leave your home without a hat. And in an age before central heating, for example, or as a protection outside, and as a Canadian who wears a tube in the winter, I know that historically, you had to have these hats. And if you were a middle or upper class man and sometimes woman, what you wanted was a beaver hat. These were luxury items. They were worn by royalty. They were repaired. It was a real investment. And beaver has a naturally barbed structure. And so you can transform it into fur felt quite easily and without mercury. It kind of-- and in fact, old greasy beaver, the beaver that had lined the robes or the coats of Russian-- Russians usually, or first nations peoples in North America, was particularly prized. It was very expensive. It was often called also coat beaver. And so you could mix that with beaver pelts. And again, the whole economic fur trade-- the fur trade found it on a fashion's romance hats. That fascinated me and caused just how that caused cultural and environmental damage, certainly. But what's interesting is, then, of course, beavers became extinct. They were hunted further fur in Europe. They became extinct in the 16th century, so they turned to North America. But by the 18th century with the loss of new France, for example, trade problems, the dwindling supplies of beaver, haders needed to turn to-- having entrepreneurs, I should say, needed to turn to other raw materials. I mean, you could turn almost any animal into a fur felt hat. In fact, one source says, if it had four legs and it walked past a hat or a workshop, it could be a hat. But the poor animals, all sorts of animals were turned into hats. But the most readily available when you didn't have beaver, which, again, became incredibly expensive in the 18th century, you could use locally available materials, so European, the hair or the rabbit. And of course, they multiply by rabbits. You can eat them. So they were a pretty easy source of fur. But the big problem with them is that the fur was not very good quality. It did not have that barbed structure of the beaver fur. And in fact, you needed to chemically transform it before you could use it for hats. And the cheapest and most effective way of doing that, unfortunately, was mixing mercury, which is a very toxic metal, the only metal that's liquid at room temperature, mixing mercury with nitric acid. And it formed a solution called caroting solution, which is interesting in relation to rabbits. But it turned the fur orange, but it also made it easier to felt and transform into hats. But of course, you can just imagine something like wool can also be transformed into felt, but it's less waterproof. For example, and less desired or less prized for hats. But for fur-felt hats, you had to have the pelt of the animal. You had to kill the animal. And it was brushed with this solution, often with bare hands. So the character, the person who brushed the solution on was often very exposed to high levels of mercury and no protection. Yeah. And I think I read somewhere in your book, too, that you talked about how these men-- because those largely men who did this felting process would be drinking alcohol throughout the process to quench their thirst. And that that combination with-- I think it was beer and the mercury poisoning was deadly. Exactly. So sort of forget the working conditions of-- they had to, in order to kind of transform the whole process, the hiding workshop was a very hot, dusty, and sweaty place for the workers. Because in fact, after you got the fur and you turned it into the actual hat through a process called planking, which involved immersing this felt into a boiling kettle that was kept constantly hot. Yes, the men-- and the one I'm thinking of is in France, they would drink-- they recommend-- if only they could-- the workers could drink coffee, sweetened with licorice. That would be great. But in fact, most of them drink wine. And there's a great painting of this guy just downing an entire bottle of wine. That would also compromise your liver function. But you can imagine this planking kettle with just steam billowing up. They're inhaling it. They were planking with very cracked hands. It was a very acidic solution that they immersed it in. They would have had cracks in their hands. The mercury could have entered into their bloodstream. And it wouldn't have been cleared out by their poor livers. So yeah, it was a very, very toxic environment, I suppose. And what is it about mercury that led to this characterization of the madhatter? Would they go crazy because of it getting into their bloodstream? Or what other ways did it affect the people that it came in contact with? Well, that's a really great question. It affected people in multiple ways. I read sort of 200 years of medical observations and reports starting in 1757 when to know a doctor visited hot shops. And he noticed that there was no one over 40 years old in these workshops. All of the hadders looked sickly cadaverous. There were physical symptoms. But there were also later people become more and more. As psychology comes in, people become more and more interested in the psychological symptoms. So the physical symptoms, one of the most obvious was shaking and trembling limbs. So even the madhatter in the Lewis Carroll, through the looking glass, he gets so nervous at court that he shakes and trembles so much that he kicks his own shoes off. So that would be the physical trembling. You had tooth loss, your teeth turned black. One doctor really evocatively says that hadders smell like metal, which I thought was really horrific and fascinating. Another doctor mentioned they couldn't button their shirts or tie their bootlaces. So it really had a physical effect on these hadders, many of whom couldn't work after too much exposure to mercury. But the psychological symptoms involved also becoming incredibly shy and paranoid and kind of nervous. So that I think you could call-- you could kind of relate to the madhatter. So for example, medical inspectors would come into factories. And because of the symptoms of mercury, the person would already feel paranoid, though, a hot worker, and he might throw down his tools and run off in kind of fear that he was being observed, which, of course, he was. So those were some of the symptoms that became obvious through studying this history. The effects of mercury were not just on the people and these men that were handling the hats. I also found a fascinating year book that a lot of the chemicals from this process were being seeped into rivers in the communities in which these hats were being made. And then I think you also talked about the mercury settling and houses and then people's food was that mercury or was that something else? It was mercury. Yes, that's what I found. One of the most interesting contrast was the kind of men's hat fashions changed constantly. I kind of call them mercurial because they're constantly shifting shapes and felt is the perfect material to do this with because it's malleable. You can shape it into whatever shape you want. So you could have a bicorn or you could have a bolder hat or you could have a top hat. So there's all these shapes you can turn it in. And these constantly change, whereas mercury itself as a substance, there's no boundary between the body and the environment that it's used in. And in fact, mercury is persistent. It never leaves the environment. So because of these hiding factories and even in Paris in the 1820s, there were 3,000 haders working in central Paris. We think of it as this wonderful tourist place to visit. That's beautiful. But in fact, it was a center of industry. So they were releasing tons of mercury into the air. And that mercury would billow out from those kettles. And as I mentioned, it would settle on the roofs. Historians of industrial pollution have talked about this. It would settle on the roofs. And then, of course, with the rain, it would be washed into the water supply. And so they think that it could have caused mass poisons. So some people trace mass poisons in the 1820s and later to this use of mercury in central Paris. But same thing in Connecticut and Danvers. There are still-- when these hiding factories from the early 19th century still release mercury into long-- when there's a flood event. -Oh, wow. And so a lot of your book focuses on this 19th century period of the Industrial Revolution, as we've been speaking to. And this is a period that witnessed this rapid growth in manufacturing technology and thus mass production of goods. So the result of which democratized once exclusive luxury goods for the masses at affordable prices, as you've talked about, now these once, you know, luxury hats that were made out of beaver, were now being made more affordably and unmasked with rabbit and less expensive fur. But as we've also been talking about these inexpensive products came at a huge and dangerous cost. And another case in point is for decades, arsenic was completely legal and unregulated. And it was usable to dye women's clothing, but also to color fashion plates. Something I've had particularly fascinating about your book was that you actually worked directly with museum collection staff and conservators to test objects in their collections for these potentially hazardous materials, such as mercury and arsenic. So can you tell us a little bit more about what your research uncovered? -I was reading both sort of histories of arsenic poisoning, sort of how people had used arsenic to poison people, but also how it had been used widely used, even in medicines in the 19th century. There's a great book by James Wharton called The Arsenic Century, which was really informative. It was used in all sorts of consumer products, even candies and I'll come back to Sheila's green, but it was used widely and it was used as rat poise in all sorts of things. And people had tested some items, historical items, like wallpaper, where it was used to color wallpaper green, which I can come back to. But really, what I found interesting was, again, this democratization of things that had been reserved to the rich part of that was colors and dyes. And historically, beautifully dyed garments were made with imported minerals, pigments, insects for cochineal, red, for example, but chemists start getting in on this very economically profitable production of dyes. And in fact, one chemist in 1778, Carl Wilhelm Sheila, invents a new form of green. And it's dubbed Sheila's green, and later often called by a lot of different names, including emerald green, so, you know, like a precious green emerald. And green was historically very hard color to obtain. You had to mix yellow and green and it often faded. And so this new green was a very modern green. And again, this is in an era of industrial revolution where towns and cities are kind of seeing a lot of influx from people from the country. They're becoming very populists, also very gray and polluted. Green was the color that people desired. And so this beautiful green, which was sometimes even called the bovelle, the beautiful green, was a kind of amazing innovation. It didn't fade and it looked good both by daylight and by gaslight or candlelight, which most greens looked gray in the evening. So you wouldn't want a green ball gown because it would look gray at the ball. But this new green was kind of almost unnaturally bright. But the problem was that it was made by mixing copper with arsenic trioxide. So again, it was purely born in a beaker. And it was quite toxic. But again, it was used for all sorts of consumer products, including, as I mentioned, candies, children's toys. It was a paint that was used to color a pigment. It was a pigment, not a dye. In other words, it wasn't water soluble, but it was used to tint all sorts of things. And I have a fashion plate that even that uses it. Plenty of fashion plates were colored with this arsenical dye, as well as textiles. And people had tested things like wallpapers where it was in very common use and would actually release arsenic into the environment. It volatilizes, it turns into a gas. As later people have figured out later scientists, but people hadn't tested dress yet. And so my question was, you know, were the texts I was reading about, you know, artificial flower makers in particular, where they would make leaves, cause leaves, they would dust them with this pigment to make them nice and green and lifelike were those reports true. And so I started out with the exhibition that we co-curated with senior curator of the Bada Shumuseum Elizabeth Semelhack. We wanted to test some objects from the Bada Shumuseum's collection, and in fact, I approached our physics department, and they opened their lab doors and helped us test about over 30 objects and to find out with XRF technology, which is X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy. And in fact, it was quite complicated scientifically, because lead and arsenic overlap on the spectrum. But if you found copper as well, and the scientists helped me, Eric De Silva helped me figure out if we could, you know, in terms of the presence, finding the presence of arsenic. And in fact, not all, but many of the artifacts that we tested did have arsenic. Oh, wow. Yeah, it was, I have to admit it was maybe, we had moments in the lab where we were jumping up and down arsenic. And we were, you know, maybe we shouldn't have been so happy that the quantities, because it volatilizes, because it evaporates. In fact, the quantities weren't dangerous now, but at the time they may have been quite. According to historical records, they work very toxic at the time, and we have evidence that it did affect the workers. For example, Matilda Scheuer, who was a young 19-year-old artificial flower maker, had worked with the pigment for 18 months. And she became very sick, her eyes turned green, and she died a horrible death from arsenic poisoning after working in the artificial flower making industry. And it caused these horrible, it was what was called an irritant poison. So it would cause horrible sores on people's hands, their mouths, all sorts of body parts that came into contact with this arsenic. So using the scientific testing, I found things, for example, I was in the print room at the Victorian Albert Museum, and I found this wonderful flower making kit. It was for, you know, the ladies who wanted to make flowers for gifts for their friends, for example, and they tested about four or five locations at the V&A for us, which was fantastic. And in four of those five locations, they found arsenic. So, and for example, the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto also tested a dress from the 1850s. And arsenic, the Museum of London tested a beautiful, lovely, but suspiciously green child's dress, probably for about an eight to ten-year-old from the 1840s, and they found arsenic. So lots of institutions, I was really grateful, lots of institutions got in on it and helped us detect the presence of arsenic in these garments. What fascinated me was that arsenic in the 19th century was the most popular poison. It was quite easy to add to drinks and food, and many women used it in particular, because they could poison their husbands with it. But in the 19th century, because of this poisoning, forensic technology started to catch up to these murderouss, and they developed tests, notably the marsh test and the ranch test, and these were tests that enabled people to detect the presence of arsenic in people's stomachs, for example. But what fascinated me was that these tests also got applied. Women's sanitary association saw the effect that these arsenic pigments, these green pigments were having on the young girls and women that worked in the artificial flower making industry. And they asked one world famous chemist Hoffman to test green dresses and green wreaths that women would wear to the ball, and they used the same tests that they were using to detect these poisons in criminal trials. And so Hoffman came out with a big letter in the Times, the London Times saying that in fact one dress had enough arsenic in it to poison 200 people, and the wreath could poison perhaps 40 people, 50 people. So they were using these chemical tests, and this caused a huge outcry, and there were horrible caricatures in journals like punch of the arsenic waltz showing two skeletons dancing together, and warnings not to purchase these greens. And so it became actually unfashionable, because partly because it harmed the workers, but also because consumers were very afraid of either wearing these colors, which could maybe give bourgeois women, you know, the powder from her hair wreath might give her a skin rash, or green gloves were not common. And gloves were not comfortable. They could give you hurt your hands, but, but, but basically these things became unfashionable or men afraid like don't dance with women in green, women in green should have, you know, the scarlet embroidery on their green dress saying poisoner, you know, things like that. So lots of warning consumer warnings kind of got this practice banned in France and Germany, not in England. And people certainly became more and more aware of the dangers of these chemicals, but it is still astounding how little regulation existed in the fashion and textile industries during the 19th century. And I'm just curious if you think it's largely related to a class based bias, because these were not affluent men and women being killed by these poisonous materials, but overwhelmingly the working class men and women who made them. Definitely class was was a played a huge role. And in the case of working class men, for example, hadders, I thought it was, I learned a bit more about working class culture, and I'm still studying it actually I'm finding, you know, I'm looking working on missing persons records in the Paris police archives, and I'm finding people like a hadder wandering around with psychological problems, and he his beard is turned orange, so he's probably being carried. And you know, I'm finding these these very human human victims of the working classes, but men working class men, the kind of idea of your job being risky, that was a fact of life for so many working class men and by signing on to their contracts, they kind of assumed the danger of their jobs, which was often, you know, whether you worked in the building industry or other industries that were very dangerous for your health, where you could fall, but also be poison in the case of hadders. That was just kind of part of your expectations as a worker, whereas for women, of course, and especially young girls, often a lot of the artificial flower makers were very young, I actually read of a 12. of your old French flower maker who drank the green pigment and committed suicide with it, which is just horrific. But these poor young girls and women were thought of as needing protection by the upper class and middle class women. So these ladies, ladies, sanitary society tells us, you know, kind of is on the trail to try and protect female workers. But of course, not all of them could be protected. Yeah, and a great example of class-based bias was the death of the French ballerina Emma LeVry, who died from burns sustained after her tool to to caught fire on stage. And she was a celebrity. She's beloved by the Emperor of France and his subjects alike. And her death actually resulted in fire safety innovations in the theater because there really weren't any before this. So can you speak to the fire hazards that related disproportionately to ballerinas during this time? This was not, for instance, the first time this happened. There were many nameless ballerinas before Emma that had died in summer circumstances before any regulations were made. Definitely. I mean, when we think of the prima ballerina, we think of someone very glamorous and beautiful and obviously, you know, trained athlete as well. But historically ballet dancers were really very much working class girls. The little, the young Paris trainees for the opera, they were called Ha, or rats. So you can kind of understand that they were just these working class girls who were trying to perhaps better themselves or in some cases find a wealthy male patron at the ballet. And so Emma LeVry, she was an interesting case because she was seen as the new hope of the French romantic ballet. She was born in the 1840s, but she was the daughter illegitimate daughter of a French baron who abandoned the mother who was also a dancer at the opera. But her mother had her trained to become a ballet star. So she was. At 16, she debuted in the romantic ballet, the Sildfied. There was even a whole ballet written for her by Hoffmann called Le Papillon, or The Butterfly, in which she's the starring beautiful butterfly that flits around and is actually attracted to the flame. It's horrible foreshadowing and she's saved from burning at the flames, but in fact her life finishes in a horrible blaze because tutus were actually, as you can imagine, there were starched layers and layers. The romantic tutu was rather long and especially in the age of the 1860s when the crinoline was at its height, so these wide hoop skirts. So was the ballet tutu. It wasn't held up by hoops, but it was nine to ten layers of starched petty coats. And the theater itself was a very, very dangerous space. Many theaters burned down partly, maybe someone threw their cigarette onto the floor or something like that, but also the sets would catch fire because stages were illuminated with gas lighting, which was unfortunately before Emma Liefries' accident was often opened. These open gas flames and tool tutus, starch tutus, do not mix. And in fact, she was fluffing up her skirts to make them look nice before she went onto the stage. And her skirts caught on a gas lamp, which there were huge flames, what was described as a column of flames she ran onto the stage. There was no water to put the flames out. There was nothing to protect her. She was eventually wrapped in a blanket, but 40% of her body had been burned. And of course, medical science. For her corset bones had to, they were metallic, they had to be peeled off her body. Her ballet costume survives in a little sarcophagus in the Paris Opera Museum. It's just tattered, singed. The socks are hacked off her tights. It was just, it's kind of this horrible relic of this accident. And she was not the only ballerina to suffer this fate, unfortunately. No, she was not. And the wide ballerina tutors were not the only woman's clothing susceptible to fire danger. And we will learn more about that after a brief sponsor break. Cas, like so many of us, every turn of a new year, I tell myself, I'm going to get better about meal prepping and every year life continues to get busy. And that whole plan falls apart. What finally clicked for me is realizing meals don't have to look one specific way. They just have to fit into your life. That's what Marley Spoon does really well. And that's only one reason why I love Marley Spoon. It actually adapts with you. Some nights you cook, some nights you heat, some nights you just need dinner done fast. They've got options for all of it. So that meals fit your schedule, not the other way around. Marley Spoon has tons of options in their marketplace, from meal shortcuts and drinks to fresh groceries that you can add on each week. Marley Spoon's prepared meals are exactly what they sound like. Delicious and on the table in minutes. These are life savers when I really just don't feel like cooking. This new year, fast track year way to eating well with Marley Spoon had to Marley Spoon.com for its slash offer for its slash dressed for up to 25 free meals. That's right, up to 25 free meals with Marley Spoon. That's Marley Spoon.com's for its slash offer for its slash dressed for up to 25 free meals. So, if you're on the hunt for pre-loved items from your favorite luxury brands, there is no better source than the real real. The real real has found new homes for over 37 million authenticated luxury items, so they know firsthand the impact resell has on the planet. Rather than producing more stuff, the real real is making what already exists new to you. Plus, the real real is the easiest and fastest way to sell, with over 40 million members ready to shop your closet. They use real time data to determine the highest possible price for every item and handle all the work for you, from photography and copywriting to shipping and customer service because your to-do list is already long enough. Cass and I have both been buying and selling on the real real for years now. So, what are you waiting for? They add over 10,000 new arrivals every day, and they do their daily drops at 10 a.m. and 7 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. The real real is the most trusted name and authenticated luxury resell, with over 10,000 new arrivals daily no one does resell like the real real. And now get $25 off of your first purchase when you go to the real real.com/dressed. That's the real real.com/dressed to get your $25 off. Start shopping now at the real real.com/dressed. Welcome back. So, Lively died just as the fad for the enormous cage crinolins gripped fashion in the 1860s. At the height of their production, 4.8 million crinolins were being produced a year. The expansive skirts relieved women from having to wear layers of cumbersome petty coats, but they also could prove quite deadly. Can you tell us a little bit more about that? I definitely can. The crinolins, or as it's often called in the US, the hoop skirt, was a universal fashion. Women had at least two, and this was sort of across the social spectrum. These were very, you know, again, ubiquitous fashion items. And I guess what you have to see them in tandem with is also the mass production of textiles that would, you know, all of the mechanization of making these textiles that were draped over them. And, you know, this created a huge controversy, literally, because women took up a lot of space in these crinolins, and they, you know, men felt that they couldn't reach them. So, you know, this was also considered a problem, but there were tons and tons of caricatures of women in these new broad hoop skirts. And one of the ways that it was critiqued was by stressing the crinolins as a fire hazard, which, in fact, from studying the record, yes, it was actually a fire hazard. As you can imagine, you know, it's hard to kind of keep track of your body in space, but in a world that's lit by, and heated by fire, coal, candles, sleeves or hens could catch on these flames or a spark could set them a light. And unfortunately, the crinolins did free women up from as many layers of heavy pedicotes, but it also acted as a flu. So the way it's described, it's like, you know, the air would rush up underneath and catch on fire extremely quickly. And often the textiles warn over them, the fabrics that they were draped with were very light fabrics and things like tool that Valerino's wore as well. So these, you know, beautiful but flimsy kind of garments presented a real fire hazard from everyone from the arch, an arched Duchess, a young 18 year old girl at the top of the social hierarchy, this arched Duchess who was 18 and she was smoking, which she wasn't supposed to be doing in the 1860s. Her stern, Prussian father came in and she tried to hide her cigarette behind her back and she caught on fire because of the fabrics of her crinolins. And she burned to death. In fact, in the news reports, because women weren't supposed to smoke, the news reports say she stepped on a match. But further down the social spectrum, especially at the end of the crinolins fashionability, you start seeing housemaids, for example, who are tending fires or even cooks, who are again working in this, you know, dangerous environment, having their crinolins catch on fire. That's awful. Yeah, it's really horrific. And many famous, well, Longfellow's wife Fanny had her sleeve catch on fire on a candle, I believe, and she burned to death and he was mourned her for the rest of his life. The Oscar Wilde's two half sisters also were dancing at a Halloween ball. And in Ireland and there they caught on fire and both of them died because of course, if your friend was on fire, you could couldn't save them without putting yourself at risk. And the same was true of ballerinas. And so there were many, many real life incidents where fire did cause the death of women. Of course, women, ballerinas were seen, it was a romantic death for ballerina, unfortunately. But also, this was their working costume, their occupational costume. So they were not sort of morally censored, but women wearing these supposedly frivolous fashions of crinolins, which of course, couldn't really not wear a crinoline because of social pressure. But women who wore them as a fashion were often censored. There's a picture of Madame Crinolinska, for example, who, after setting hearts of flame in her ridiculously large crinolins, she burns, she then becomes a victim of the flame. So there was a lot of moral center of women wearing these crinolins. - Yeah, and we talk about moral center of women and their fashion, a lot on dress, 'cause it extends beyond just what they're wearing, but they're actually their role in society and the threat of their role in society. But your book is called Fashion Victims. We've talked a lot about fashion victims in this interview, and there's so many throughout history and in so many different forms, but you say the most famous literal fashion victim was the modern dancer, Isadora Duncan. So can you tell us about how fashion led to her tragic death? - Yes, fire was a real, I talk about both the hazards to the bodies of makers of fashion, who like the hadders or the flower makers were often more affected by certain types of hazards like chemical toxins, but the wearers of certain fashions were also kind of disproportionately affected. So probably again, the most dangerous fashion for women I found was fire. Women were expected to dress in fashions that were often the silhouettes were more exaggerated, the fabrics could be dangerous. And in an age where transportation, I'm talking now into the kind of early 20th century, you start getting fashions that really don't work with modern environments. And for example, you get the hobble skirt, which was a very tightly fitting skirt, which was also called the airplane skirt because it was possibly inspired by a woman, the first female passenger in an airplane who had to tie her skirt up and make it tight so that it wouldn't flap up and show, of course she was sitting on the outside of the airplane. So there's these new fashions that are inspired by modern technologies, and you also start getting obviously motor transport. Now Isadora Duncan, who interestingly enough, she favored these classical fashions. She was known for wearing bare feet and long French shawls and gree-shin inspired clothing. She wore those dresses on stage, but she also wore them off stage in her private life. And so you can imagine they were beautiful and elegant, but they were also perhaps not what you would want to wear in a convertible car. And that's just what she did. She, in 1827, on a niece on the French Riviera, she was taking, she was a passenger in kind of race car, Bugatti. And I looked up the design of the car, and it was very interestingly that the driver sat in fact in front of the passenger. There were only two seats in this car, and the passenger seat was set further back from the driver for whatever reason. And the car itself had kind of typically race car wheels for the time, which looked a bit like the spoked wheels of a bicycle. And famously, Isadora Duncan, as she was leaving and saying goodbye to her friends, she threw a long red French shawl that her friend had given her, and there were fragments of this that survive in different collections. But she threw her shawl around across her shoulder. And unfortunately, she didn't realize that the fringes of that shawl, the long red fringes, had caught and caught in the spokes of the wheels. So when the driver, who couldn't see her, started driving the Bugatti, unfortunately the shawl got tangled. This is the fringes and the shawl got tangled and strangled her almost immediately, breaking her neck. - That's just awful. - Yes, it was kind of a horrific way to die. But again, it's sort of the combination of dress that was, if not fashionable. Well, actually shawls were incredibly fashionable at that time. - Yeah, it's French shawls too. - Exactly. They were, I did look into it. They were very, very, alembod, shall we say. And kind of this modern technology with the auto speeding along the road didn't go together. - 'Cause this was in 1926. - '17. - '17. - '17. - '17. Which is interesting, 'cause that's the year that they start becoming more and more aware of automobile accidents and even the term accident prone is coined in 1926. - And what's particularly interesting, I thought, is that you wrote how the typical ensemble that a woman would wear when in these open cars is she would have worn a head scarf and she would have worn goggles and a coat. To protect herself, but that Isadora just didn't wear any of these things, just this fashionable scarf, and that's what led to her death. - Exactly, apparently the driver offered him his leather jacket, but she refused it because she was going to wear what she wanted to wear. So. - And something I also found incredibly sad is that her two kids had also died in a horrific car accident earlier in the 1910. So cars in Isadora, Duncan were not so sad. - No, and in fact, one of the most poignant moments in my research was looking at, and I was in the Bibliotech Nation, I had the National Library in Paris, and they had sort of her records, and I found this very evocative little piece of the shawl that killed her. It was kind of kept as a relic. And so I opened the envelope, and there was the red shawl with a fringe kind of wrapping around it, almost strangling it as she had been strangled. It was just very evocative of the accident, but right beside it, there was a lock, a little, another little envelope with a lock of hair of her son who had also perished in a car accident. It was a very sad moment. - That is so sad. - So your sleuth thing for fashion victims led you to your current research project unraveling crime, which calls itself a forensic history of fashion. So you're investigating the theme of crime and clothing as weapon, evidence, and disguise. Can you please tell us about the role of clothing plays in crime solving both as weapon and evidence? I know the most famous case I can think of is the black glove uses evidence in the OJ Simpson trial, but I'm sure you have many others. - Oh yes, that is probably, that is definitely one of the most famous cases, but what I'm finding in this new project, which was certainly follows on from fashion victims, is that clothing is such an individual marker, more than I would have thought in an age of, even very mass produced items. Often it becomes, especially as CSI would like us to believe, but it becomes the clue that leads to either the victim's identity or the killers or other perpetrator of crime or suspect in a crime. So anything from the footprints left at a crime scene and Sherlock Holmes himself was kind of the master of using footprints to solve crimes. He actually uses footprints more than he uses fingerprints in his stories because fingerprinting was a new technology, whereas tracking footprints, which I just wrote an article on, is really comes from a knowledge of, for example, hunting or tracking, which humanity has used for millennia. So I'm looking at all sorts of ways, I'm one of the most fascinating, I'm looking at a tailor who was a murderer in 1860's Paris, for example, and he unfortunately dismembered someone, an elderly man to steal his money, and the police officer who becomes commissioner of police, he becomes the top police officer in Paris, describes this first, what he calls his first crime, where he detected, he first suspected a tailor because the person's dismembered limbs were actually thrown in a well that was polluted by these remains, and they brought them up to the surface and they were wrapped in black cotton percoline, so a certain type of fabric, and tied with the knot that working class tailors used to deliver their packages to their customers. So he first started suspecting a tailor, and it turns out to be the case. - Okay, I'm convinced this is the next Netflix hit TV show. - There's so much there, and forensic, what's really interesting is the way that, kind of all of these new scientific police officers start using dress to detect the identity of people, so for example, that one police officer in Lyon called Edmund Mouca, he was a famous criminologist, he starts developing all sorts of ways, he looks at, for example, he tells police to un-pick the pockets of the clothing of their suspects because using a little vacuum cleaner that one of his students develops with a filter, they can tell what profession someone belongs to by the dust in their pockets, so for example, he caught a counter-fitter because the metal alloys and the dust on the pockets and the sleeves was exactly the same as that of the counter-fitted coins. - And something I find incredibly interesting is that your research is incredibly poignant and important to today's social and political climate. We are still living in a day and age where you can be criminalized and even killed for what you wear. Can you speak a little bit more to this? - Yes, I mean, I'm a historian, and I kind of try to focus on the long 19th century, so this crime project will probably sort of cover the 1800s to about the 1930s, but I guess what continues to fascinate me is that unfortunately, from the hoodie of Trayvon Martin, just the most banal mass-produced kind of clothing you could find a hoodie or in the UK, for example, hoodies are also banned from certain shopping malls, in an age of CCTV covering your face is dangerous. People are still criminalized for their clothing, whether it's Again, racialized people or whether it's, for example, people trans people are also often victimized. I mean, it was criminal to wear the dress belonging to another person's sex. And while that has finally been decriminalized, you know, often in the late 20th century, people are still persecuted for what they wear or, for example, religious forms of dress like hijabs. I mean, I find it troubling and traumatizing that people are often either criminalized or assaulted or harassed because of what they wear. And is it illegal to wear the hijab and France? I don't think it's illegal. It's certainly there was a big controversy of people wanting to cover up, for example, on beaches and wearing the burka on a beach or the hijab on a beach, which it's really interesting. Our idea is of freedom and what constitutes freedom. That's a whole other debate, you know, whether it's to undress or dress dress and, you know, why is modest dress problematic? But it's in France in particular comes from this long separation between state and religion. So, for example, in theory, you're not allowed to wear crucifix, for example, for school schoolgirls could not wear an overt sign of religious affiliation either. But yeah, that's a good case in point of something being, and in Quebec and Canada, there have been controversies over whether women should be allowed to, you know, hold public offices if they wear head coverings or facial coverings, which were defeated. Good. It is a 20% after all. I like to think we're making some progress, even if sometimes it feels like we're moving backwards in other areas. Definitely. Allison, thank you so much for being here today. This was incredibly illuminating. And the perfect topic for a Halloween episode, I must say. Yes, no, it's been a pleasure to talk to you. But before we go, do you have any other projects you're working on? Your, of course, going to have to come back when this project is published. Definitely. And it's going to be another exhibition at the Bada Shumuseum called Exhibit A. So, you know, how footwear is used as evidence. But what's really being great about this topic is, is the way that the public has been so interested in it. And in fact, when I did the exhibition called Faction Victims at the Bada Shumuseum with Elizabeth, Samoac, publisher, Canadian publisher called Owl Kids Approach Me. And they wanted to do a tween version. So right now in April, there's a tween version called Killer Style that's coming out of the Faction Victims book that's being rewritten and co-authored with with a friend. So I'm really excited for that to come out as well. Awesome. Well, we will keep our eyes open for that. And please keep us posted. Thank you again for being here. My pleasure. Yes, thank you, Allison. I highly suggest that everyone buy this book. It is a delightful read and illustrated with over a hundred images. It really is. And after reading her book, I was pleased to discover so many connections with episodes that we have done on dress this season. For instance, in our episode on Queen Alexandra of Great Britain, we talked about her highly anticipated marriage to Prince Edward in 1863. Well, British seamstresses were working behind the scenes for exorbitantly long hours to dress women for the event. And there was one in particular, this 20-year-old seamstress by the name of Mary Ann Walkley. Well, April, she reportedly died after being forced to sew for 26 hours straight. Oh my gosh. That's terrible. Yeah. And also we did the episode on the controversial history of cashmere, the cashmere with the K episode. And in that, we discussed the gift of cashmere sholes in the Middle East as part of the Colotte or robes of honor ceremony. Well, Cass, did you know that on more than one occasion, these robes were actually poisoned in order to eliminate the giftors' political enemies. Yeah, it is incredible how many ways fashion has been used to literally kill people over the years. And actually, we did not have a chance to touch on it in the interview, but Alison's book also addresses the many ways in which these dangers are still very much a part of our modern date reality. In fact, she says that we are quote more ignorant now of the health hazards of fashion than in the 19th century. Yes. And this is something that we addressed on our recent fashion and sustainability episode. The fashion and textile industries post huge risks, not to just humans, but also to the environment. Fashion has come a long way, but it still has a long way to go. And as consumers, we hold no small responsibility in making sure that this happens. No, we have a huge responsibility. However, Alison's book does conclude with an inspiring passage that I would like to quote here. She writes, "As an incredibly powerful social and economic force, fashion is capable of bringing health and well-being to those it touches physically and emotionally. As this book proves, we need fewer fashion victims and more fashion saviors. Let us write a new dialogue to replace Leopardie's romantic vision of death, recognizing fashion as her sister. What if life and fashion linked hands instead?" Oh, that's great. Well, that does it for us today, dress listeners, but not for us this week because Thursday we are very excited to bring you a very special bonus episode where April and I will dissect one of the most famous fashion icons of all time. So tell your friends and tune in. Until next time, may you take time to consider the ghosts hanging in your closet next time you get dressed. Be sure to follow us on Instagram @dressed_podcast where we post images daily to accompany each podcast. And this is also our Twitter handle. You can find us on Facebook as well at Dressed Podcast without the underscore. And we absolutely love hearing from our listeners who please write to us at [email protected]. And don't forget about our merch store, which you can find at tpublic.com/dressed. That's t-e-e-public.com/dressed. Check out the new designs that we've recently added. And as always, thank you to our producers, Holly Frye and Casey Peegram. And everyone else at HouseDuffworks makes the show possible each week. Catch you soon. Bye!