Killer Style: How Fashion Has Injured, Maimed, and Murdered Through History

The macabre subject matter of Killer Style will appeal to almost every youngster. Those not put off by the ghoulish front cover image of a pair of memento mori wax figures, half skeletal and half fashionably dressed in very early nineteenth century garb, will want to discover more of what the book has to offer. Readers will find brief case studies of deadly fashion trends spanning hundreds of years. The ghoulish titles of the case studies cleverly reinforce the sense of danger. Readers will be introduced to troubling questions about industrial practices and lack of labour safety in workplaces in the past and continuing today. The book draws upon research that Matthews David, a fashion historian and associate professor at Ryerson University, conducted and reported in Fashion Victims, a book written for adults and published by Bloomsbury in 2015. Many of the images are common to both books. McMahon, a fashion journalist, is also an editor and writer for children. Gillian Wilson, an illustrator and printmaker, contributes original art work that supplements the historic art work and photographs that appropriately complement the text.

Killer Style is arranged in three parts focusing on fashion for the “horrified head” (including the face and neck), the “miserable middles” (torso and arms), and “unlucky legs” (including the feet). Style is more than just clothing and accessories. The first section includes accounts of dangerous hair dyes and cosmetics laced with lead. Each part includes accounts of workers who suffered from hazardous work materials and unhealthy working conditions. Since the 1730s, makers of felt hats were exposed to mercury with horrible consequences. In the early 20th century, radium was used in consumer products, including clocks and watches featuring glow in the dark numbers painted chiefly by young women. Radium poisoning could be lethal, and one manufacturer denied connections to workers’ health problems despite their own secret reports that conclusively linked radium paint with worker illness.

Factory catastrophes are also recalled. The Triangle Waistshirt Factory fire in New York in 1911 left 146 dead and 71 injured and helped change workplace regulations in America. Recently, the collapse of the Rana Plaza in Bangladesh in 2013 killed 1134 and injured more than 2500 workers. In both cases, the garment workers were poorly paid and vulnerable. In the decade before the Turkish government banned denim sandblasting in 2009, young men working without protective wear and in unventilated conditions contracted silicosis from inhaling tiny silica grains. As the authors point out, sandblasting of denim continues in poorer countries where regulations are more lax than Turkey. Perhaps accounts of injustices like these will inspire current middle school students to become agents of change in the same way that exploitation of child labourers inspired Craig Kielburger a generation ago.

Killer Style is certain to fascinate as well as inform. It busts myths about the corset and the depiction of the extroverted and party-loving Mad Hatter of Lewis Carrol’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. In truth, sufferers of mercury poisoning were more likely to suffer paranoia and be irritable and withdrawn. Fortunately, regulations and innovation eliminated hazards such as arsenic used to create green dyes used in dresses and hair wreaths in the early 1860s. A British chemist made flannelette safer. Celluloid plastics used to make inexpensive but flammable tortoiseshell hair combs were replaced by less dangerous plastics. Thankfully some fashion trends, such as the hobble skirt, are history. Taken to extremes, impractical platform shoes caused the death of at least one driver unable to use the brakes while many fell while trying to walk in very high heels.

Consumers of fashion and manufacturers both must remain watchful lest they fall victim to new health hazards and perpetuate unhealthy working conditions.

Killer Style includes an extensive bibliography and index. It is both interesting and thought-provoking and should be popular with the target audience.