Killer heels! Not to mention toxic socks and radioactive belts - how our clothes have been the death of us for 200 years

Clothes are thought of as harmless pleasures, but can be dangerous
Alison Matthews David explores how fashion can kill and injure
People have burned to death and been poisoned by their clothes

By Jane Shilling for the Daily Mail

Published: 17:24 EST, 1 October 2015 | Updated: 17:51 EST, 1 October 2015

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Book of the week

FASHION VICTIMS

by Alison Matthews David

(Bloomsbury £25)

We think of clothes as one of life's harmless pleasures. They are as necessary to us as food (even the naked rambler wears boots and a hat).

But at the same time as keeping us warm, dry and decent, clothes are the way we present ourself to the world.

Going: Naomi Campbell falling during Vivienne Westwood's fashion show in 1993

In the time that it takes to change an outfit, we can become completely different people - formal, glamorous, playful or seductive. And like good food, stylish clothes can bring a sparkle to a dull day.

A matching set of silk underwear hidden beneath a businesslike work suit, or a brilliant designer bargain nabbed in a charity shop have an amazing power to lift the spirits.

But fashion has its shadowy side, and our own anxieties about the ethics of fast fashion - clothes made by workers in appalling conditions, to be sold at throwaway prices - are not as far as we might think from the lurid scandals that haunted our fashionable Victorian ancestors.

Scores of wretched young women described in Matthews David's chapter on Flaming Tutus and Combustible Crinolines were victims of the Victorian fashion for billowing crinolines draped with flounces of tulle - which were a conflagration waiting to happen in an age of open fireplaces.

High-society victims of crinoline fires included the 18-year-old Archduchess Mathilde of Austria, whose tiny act of teenage rebellion went fatally wrong when she was caught smoking by her strict Prussian father.

She hid the illicit cigarette behind her back and burned to death in front of her appalled family.

In 1871, Oscar Wilde's half-sisters, Mary and Emily, died at a Halloween ball when Mary's dress brushed past an open fireplace during the last waltz, and Emily caught fire while trying to save her.

But if the drawing-room was a perilous environment for a Victorian fashionista, the theatre was more dangerous still. Stage lighting in the 19th-century consisted of gas lamps, positioned at foot level to illuminate the legs of dancers beneath their gauzy costumes.

...going: fashion can be dangerous and deadly, causing accidents

The casualty rate among ballerinas was shocking. Six girls, including four sisters, perished at the Continental Theatre in Philadelphia in September, 1861.

In France, an Imperial decree in 1958 required all theatre sets and costumes to be flameproofed, but many defied the law, believing that the process made their ethereal clothes look dingy.

Emma Livry, a 20-year-old prima ballerina, was among those who refused to wear the treated costumes.

'I take upon myself all responsibility for anything that may occur,' she insisted. She had signed her own death warrant. Her tutu caught fire at a rehearsal: the flames were extinguished, but she died eight months later, aged 21.

...gone! Fashion has its perils, from sprained ankles and car accidents caused by platform shoes, to trailing scarves that become trapped in car wheels

The charred remains of her costume were donated to the Opera Museum - a macabre souvenir of a tragically avoidable death.

The lurking perils of green fabric and bowler hats were less obvious. Yet they claimed hundreds of wretched victims, poisoned by the chemicals involved in their manufacture.

The Mad Hatter of Alice In Wonderland displays classic symptoms of mercury poisoning - his anxiety and tremor are characteristic of workers affected by the substance, which was still being used in the English hatmaking industry as late as 1966.

Another violently toxic substance - arsenic - was so popular with domestic murderers that a bill was passed in 1851 to limit the amounts that could be sold to individuals.

B ut its industrial use remained unregulated, and arsenic was the active ingredient in a range of green dyes that were wildly fashionable in the 19th century.

In wallpaper, shoes, artificial flowers and even children's clothing, arsenic was everywhere. The little girl who must have been thrilled to wear the pretty, hand-embroidered green muslin dress, now in the collection of the Museum of London, could have had no idea that she was actually dressed in a deadly poison.

Elizabeth Ann Abdela, a 15-year-old from Shoreditch, was given a bunch of green glass grapes intended as trimmings for a hat. Unaware that the juicy-looking green colour was arsenic, she couldn't resist popping a grape into her mouth. A single lick was enough to kill her.

These days, we like to imagine that regulations keep us safe from such dangerous substances as the caustic eyelash dye that blinded an American schoolteacher in 1933, or the toxic socks that raised a rash on the toes of a British MP so painful he was laid up for months.

But neither our clothes nor our cosmetics are necessarily as safe as we might like to think. From sprained ankles and car accidents caused by platform shoes, to trailing scarves that become trapped, Isadora Duncan-style, in rear wheels of sports cars and ski lifts, fashion still has its perils.

Elizabeth I was famous for whitening her face with a deadly cosmetic containing lead, but even in 2011, the U.S. Food and Drug Association tested 400 lipsticks and found lead in all of them.

Matthews David is not reassured that the toxin was present at levels that the FDA deemed safe 'when lipstick is applied topically, as intended'.

'I would never apply [it] to my own lips,' she writes of the enticingly named Tickled Pink, produced by a highly reputable cosmetics firm.

Even more startling was the black leather belt sold by Asos that set off alarms at U.S. border control in 2012. The belt was embellished with 801 studs containing cobalt-60, radioactive enough to damage internal organs with long-term wear.

These days, we can be reasonably confident that our hats won't drive us mad, or our accessories poison us if we can't resist licking them.

Still, as Matthews David's carefully researched and beautifully illustrated book reminds us, it is not just our credit cards that can fall victim to a passion for fashion.