M.J. Rose

…But would you have worn them anyway?

Two skeletons dressed as lady and gentleman in “the Arsenic Waltz,” Etching (1862) (courtesy Wellcome Library, London)

Fatal Victorian Fashion and the Allure of the Poison Garment

by Allison Meier

“Staying stylish in the Victorian period could be a dance of death. 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.

Opened this week at the Bata Shoe Museum in Toronto, 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. The exhibition of over 90 artifacts was organized by Bata Shoe Museum Senior Curator Elizabeth Semmelhack, and Alison Matthews David, an associate professor at the School of Fashion at Ryerson University who is publishing a book next year focusing on deadly fashion. Together 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 shoeboxes to a physics lab to test for their lethal secrets…”

For the complete piece click here.

An eerie and wonderful animation from 1917 – feast your eyes!

A fairy brings two dolls to life, part of a short lived stop-motion puppet series by animator Howard S. Moss, adapted from a series of books entitled Motoys in Life published by Toyland Publishing Company. Origin of American animation 1900-1921 describes the film as “Alice in Wonderland meets the Garden of Eden… [a] surreal fable of a drunk rabbit, bowling dwarfs, and the two bewildered girls of the title.” (The Public Domain Review)

…The best little slide show we’ve seen in a while.

Here’s How People 100 Years Ago Thought We’d Be Living Today

By Greg Miller (Wired)

“In 100 years, there will be flying taxis and people will travel to the moon routinely. Knowledge will be instilled into students through wires attached to their heads. These may sound like the predictions of modern-day futurists, but they’re how people a century ago saw the future–otherwise known to you and me as the present.

These vintage European postcards illustrate a view of the 21st century that is remarkably prescient in some ways and hilariously wrong in others, says Ed Fries, who selected them from his private collection…”

Click here for the rest, and click the image below to see the pictures.

With the propeller churning and the spotlight on their destination, a group of travelers returns from the moon in the year 2012. Sure, we actually went to the moon in 1969, but this image suggests that lunar travel would become routine, Fries says. “Just another weekend trip.”
Courtesy of Ed Fries