Truly Bizarre Fashion Trends From History

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.

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.

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”?

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.

Escoffions didn’t last the course: this was not just because people associated it with the Devil, but also because wearing one was just plain hard. Some women were barely able to move while wearing one. By the time the 16th century rolled around, the escoffion trend was dying out, never to return.

So they went to great lengths to get it. Some people, after they’d slathered themselves in white makeup, would take a blue pencil and use it to highlight their veins. They even did this on their cleavage! Bizarre, but true.

Bathing gowns of that era were loose and certainly not skin-tight, and they had little lead weights sewn into them so that a swimmer wouldn’t suffer a wardrobe malfunction at a crucial moment. But not a huge amount of women would actually go under the water: this was seen as “inappropriate.”

They were also downright dangerous. Victorians had open fires in their homes, and should a crinoline skirt meet a flame, the results were often fatal. Not one but two of Oscar Wilde’s sisters died from catching their crinoline on fire.

Bird-lovers were not at all impressed with their sheer number of birds slaughtered to make ladies feel fashionable. Members of the Society for the Protection of Birds were told to refrain from “wearing the feathers of any bird not killed for purposes of food, the ostrich only excepted.” By the 1920s they had successfully campaigned for a law prohibiting the slaughter of birds for feathers.

Kohl unfortunately had lead as one of its ingredients, and that causes long-term health problems. Both the rich and the poor would have been putting lead on their faces constantly, and we’ll never know how many deaths that must have caused.

Chaperons were huge in the Middle Ages. Sometimes people would wear them in certain colors to state their support for a political party, just as people do with modern-day clothes right now. But by the 15th century, chaperons were on their way out, and you can see why.

Later on, the clogs began to be worn as bridal shoes. A groom would make a pair for his bride, with the pointed part representing the heights of his love. That’s touching… but it’s still hard to imagine someone actually walking in them.

They probably did save money for many people, especially folks like waiters who needed to dress in what was then considered a “professional” way. But there was just something intrinsically silly about the dickie, not least because the rubber ones sometimes rolled up while being worn. Also, now, the name might make you giggle.

A man called Philip Stubbes wrote in 1583 that the visard-wearing women “look so that if a man that knew not their guise before, should chance to meet one of them he would think he met a monster or a Devil.” Luckily for Stubbes and everyone else, this is one fashion trend that’s long, long gone.

Members of the public were concerned that suffragettes might start using them against their enemies. Even if they didn’t, though, having a massive pin about your person is seldom a good idea. In 1910 laws were finally passed to require the tips of hatpins to be covered up.

Beauty patches could also be used to send a secret message to someone else in the know. Sometimes they were worn on either side of the face to denote political leanings, or occasionally they were even employed to send a message to a lover.

That meant some people went to great lengths to sport a unibrow: the complete opposite of what happens today! They would put black powder on their brow to make it stand out, but if that didn’t work, they would use a combination of goat’s hair and tree sap to make a big, bold single line of facial hair.

First, the hair had to be powdered to turn it a fashionable white. Then, the poor servants would attach some wooden frames and animal hair to their mistress’s head. After that came the styling and curling: luckily, curling tongs had been invented by then. Finally, in the last step of the process, the pile of hair could be decorated with fruit or models or whatever the wearer chose. And then another process began: getting rid of the inevitable lice.

Eye portraits soon found their way onto all sorts of accessories the average person might keep upon their person, such as snuffboxes. But these days, of course, you can simply snap a photo of your lover’s eye using your smartphone.

Some men of the Georgian era went so far as to pad their breeches out. An enthusiastic “dandy” might get some bombast to fill out a pair of skinny legs… and perhaps fill something else out too.

It’s thought that zibellini were used as a sort of flea-catcher. Fleas would be attracted to the dead animal and thus leave the actual human being alone. Did it work? Maybe, but please don’t try it yourself!

Corsets were generally made from whale bone or metal; if laced too tight, the effects on the human body could be catastrophic. Some women simply couldn’t breathe in corsets and would faint, while others ended up with deformed rib cages.

If a paduka was made of ivory or silver, that was a sign of wealth. Yet no matter how wealthy you were, it seems likely you’d need at least a few practice runs before being able to properly walk in a pair.

And it wasn’t just the hair dye. For a brief period of time, radium was in everything — toothpaste, food, drink, and even things touted as medical cures. The results were predictably devastating, with many people dying of cancer. We now know just how dangerous radium is, but the knowledge came at a tremendous cost.

A lot of work went into the ruff. They were made from lace and an exciting new import, starch, which the Tudors absolutely couldn’t get enough of. Servants would have to spend a lot of time starching the neckwear — a duty which ruined their hands — just so that their employers could look fashionable.

Long nails were a big deal in ancient China. Nail polish was popular and it was made with beeswax, egg white, and natural colorants such as ones made from flowers. One popular concubine of the time, Yang Guifei, was said to have been born with naturally red nails, such was her beauty.

Codpieces popped up in the 14th century and stuck around until the 16th. They weren’t just for covering a man’s private parts, though, they were also used as a sort of purse! Yes, men kept their coins in there: how… convenient! And it was also handy that one could enlarge the codpiece to give different ideas of what lay within.

Skin creams of the era had manure in them — yep, manure — and lead. As you can imagine, this was a combination that could only ever ruin your skin, not improve it. Plenty of women suffered serious health conditions and some of them even died, all for the sake of pure-white skin.

Men of the Edwardian era wore these stiff collars all the time without considering how dangerous it could be to have something hard wrapped around your neck. Apparently, it wasn’t unheard of for men to fall asleep in their collars and choke to death. At one point, so the story goes, the collars gained the nickname of “father-killers.”

“I regret binding my feet,” an elderly woman named Zhou Guizhen told Morning Edition in 2007. “I can’t dance, I can’t move properly. I regret it a lot. But at the time, if you didn’t bind your feet, no one would marry you.” Thankfully, times have changed.

That probably contributed to the fact that her teeth are said to have been a decaying mess. Royalty often led fashion in the 16th century: apparently some women even mimicked the Queen’s rotting molars by painting their own teeth black.

Tapering down to an excruciatingly narrow hem, this garment effectively prevented women from proceeding at more than a stilted walking pace. A strange and disturbing fashion indeed!

Another added bonus of this frankly ridiculous-looking shoe was that the chopines also raised the lady wearing them above the throng. This showed that she was a person of wealth and distinction.

Think of gaudy stockings, garish waistcoats, and elaborately buckled shoes and you’ve got the picture. But the most bizarre aspect of the look was the gigantic wig topped by a tiny hat or a feather that these dedicated followers of fashion wore.

They were large extensions worn on both sides of a wealthy lady’s dress. These structures of whalebone and other materials protruded bizarrely, greatly exaggerating the width of a woman from the waist downwards.

The extremely pointed shoes got their name because a sharp implement such as a pin was used to pick a winkle — a sea snail that’s a British food delicacy — out of its shell.

This towering headwear later became a luxury item worn by the wealthy in many northern European countries. It was probably ill-advised if you lived in a house with low ceilings, though!

While most bliauts were probably made from linen or wool, if you really wanted to push the boat out then you could have had one made up out of silk.

Taking their name from the Polish city of Krákow — where they were first worn — the pointed fronts of the shoes were sometimes so long that the wearer had to tie them to their knees to make walking possible!

Sometimes, though, it just wasn’t enough to pull back one’s hair from the face. And if a woman didn’t have a naturally large forehead, then some more drastic measures might be taken. Namely, she’d attack her own forehead with some tweezers to pluck out any hairs that sprouted out of line. Ouch!

But if a woman regretted her decision to remove her eyebrows, she needn’t have worried. Rather than having to wait for them to grow back, she could simply apply a pair of false brows. All she needed to do was get hold of some mouse or rat fur and stick it to her face!