6 Popular Fashion Trends (That Killed People)

Wait, it gets worse. In 1863 in Santiago, Chile, between 2000 and 3000 people died in a church fire. When a gas lamp lit the veils on the walls, people tried to run outside, but the width of the women's skirts blocked the door, and crinolines with women inside piled up in front of the exit, making an escape impossible even for the people who'd been smart enough not to wear hoop skirts.

What the Fuck Were They Thinking?

The crinoline, in making someone's ass look big, would also make their waist look smaller, and so women didn't have to wear a corset. Why would they take such extravagant measures to avoid that? Well...

In 1903, a woman died suddenly due to two pieces of corset steel that became lodged in her heart. Yeah, when your outfit fucking stabs you to death, it's probably a sign that you've made a bad fashion decision.

What the Fuck Were They Thinking?

What else do you do when you live in a society that demands women have a shape that's physically impossible? They were stuck between wearing a thing that could snap ribs, or a ridiculous cage dress that could fling them into oncoming traffic at the first gust of wind. At that point, you just flip a coin and wait for someone to invent feminism.

Footbinding cut off circulation in the toes, and the procedure oftentimes lead to gangrene or other life-threatening infections. Gangrenous toes were actually considered to be a good thing, because that meant the toes might fall off. The ideal was a foot that wasn't a foot at all, but simply a continuation of the leg. If the woman happened to die in the middle of all this, that was a real shame, but at least she'd be buried with nice feet.

What the Fuck Were They Thinking?

A woman with normal-sized feet was considered ugly and frankly, unwedable. We all know what that's like, when a woman who doesn't have hideously mutilated feet starts stomping about, walking all normal and shit. Would you want to marry that woman? Of course not.

Women who didn't have bound feet were considered to be provincial, because only farmers needed to be able to walk and get work done. A real lady staggered on her heels or rode piggyback, because she was unable to put any pressure on her toes (if she had any).

The foot itself was usually covered in sores, puss and gave off a repugnant smell, and if you happened upon a Chinese woman naked in the days of footbinding in China, the first thing she'd try to cover would be her feet. Not that you'd want to see those feet anyway; men actually never saw their ladies' feet without beautiful silk shoes on, but if they had, we're thinking that would ruin the mood pretty fast.

A "healthy" lotus foot.

A fontange was a headdress for proper ladies in 17th and early 18th century France that consisted of ribbons, lace and sometimes small cap intertwined with the lady's hair. Doesn't seem like the sort of thing that could murder you, does it?

How It Could Kill You:

As the 17th century grew unhip, the fontange became larger and larger until it culminated with women that had entire ecosystems attached to their skulls.

When left alone and unprovoked, the fontange probably only maimed, but never actually killed anyone. It's only when you attached the headdress to a lady, and said lady started moving about in a room full of candle chandeliers that the fontange would demonstrate its malicious power, as everything in it was fiercely flammable. They might as well have been wearing gasoline soaked rags on their heads.

Just ask "Mrs. von Ilten" who suffered "... burnt neck, face and hands" because, as the reporter casually stated, "her fontange caught fire, she stared and fell and did not think to throw it off as I use to do..."

We're going to give the good Mrs. von Ilten enough credit to assume she also screamed a bit when the fire started melting away her flesh.

What the Fuck Were They Thinking?

According to lore, one of the king's favorite paramours (that's Middle English for fuck-buddies), Angelique de Fontanges, lost her cap one day when she was out riding horses with the king. Not wanting to let her hair fall freely - as that might be dangerous - she took a piece of ribbon and tied it to her hair.

The king liked it so much that he made de Fontanges a duchess, and because all of France's women wanted to be just as cool as the duchess a fashion trend was born. Never mind that Angélique de Fontanges herself died at the age of 20, probably from standing too close to a candle with her decorative combustible head.

Before the age of the big name cosmetics brands; the easy, breezy beautiful way was for people to smear their entire face with lead. That's right, lead. The makeup choice of people from ancient Greece and all the way up to the 1920s was a lead-based powder or lotion that rendered their faces white and turned their bloodstream into something that would make a vampire puke.

How It Could Kill You:

Lead poisoning is a slow killer, so it would take years for people to accumulate enough lead in their bodies to die from it. But once they had there was little one could do but melt them down and create more makeup.

The symptoms of lead poisoning were many, and it would attack the entire body with some of the major symptoms being: brain damage, wrecking the nervous system, headaches, loss of appetite, anemia, a constant metallic taste in the mouth, paralysis, insomnia, and, oddly enough, a limp wrist.

An actual victim of lead poisoning.

What the Fuck Were They Thinking?

People actually became aware of the health risks associated with lead makeup in ancient Greece -- that is, more than 2000 years ago -- and they would ridicule people who used excessive amounts of the stuff. Both men and women wore lead makeup, and as a result their faces gradually became more and more damaged. Of course the solution to that was to cover the damage with more lead makeup.

Seriously, folks, this was natural selection at work here.