Platform pumps

American actress, singer, playwright, and screenwriter Mae West (1893-1980) was very cognizant of her appearance. While her attention-getting bosom didn't need any enhancement, she felt that her height did. Only a petite 5' (1.5 m) tall, West increased her stature – both oncreen and off – by wearing the modified shoes above, usually hidden by her long dresses. The pumps, donated to the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising (FIDM) Museum along with some undergarments, gave her a lift to the tune of 9 1/2" (24 cm)!
Thanks, Sue!

Posted with Blogsy

Napoleon's hat

In the 1801 painting "Napoleon Crossing the Alps” (IMAGE HERE), Jacques Louis David depicts the French emperor in his trademark bicorn hat. He actually wore the 2-cornered, black felt hat sideways so that he could be recognized on the battlefield. Alexandre Giquello of the Osenat auction house in Fontainebleau, France, says of Napoleon, "He understood at that time that the symbol was powerful. On the battlefields, his enemies called him ‘The Bat’ because he has that silhouette with this hat.” During his 15-year reign, Napoleon reportedly went through about 120 hats, 19 of which of are still extant. One of these (PICTURED ABOVE), in the possession of Prince Albert II of Monaco, just sold at auction to an unnamed South Korean collector for $2.4 million (£1.5 million).

Posted with Blogsy

Slaves to fashion

While today's fashionistas continue to risk their health balancing on high heels and slimming their waists with corsets, Victorians risked their lives to costume themselves in the most up-to-date colors. The first synthetic dye, created by William Henry Perkin in 1856, was mauve – and the woman who wore the shoes above would have been considered especially fashion-forward – but the dye was incredibly toxic, made with arsenic, picric acid, and other harmful chemicals. The chemicals were hazards for both the wearer and the maker, such as the mercury used by milliners that led to the proverb "mad as a hatter." A long-term exhibit focusing on the historic dangers of style has just opened at the Bata Shoe Museum in Toronto. Fashion Victims: The Pleasures and Perils of Dress in the 19th Century was organized by senior curator Elizabeth Semmelhack and fashion professor Alison Matthews David of Ryerson University. The exhibit is structured like a period showroom and Matthews David remarks, "You could just go through this beautiful Parisian shopping arcade and enjoy this spectacle of consumption, but if you read into it you find that the story behind it is not quite as pretty as the artifact."

Posted with Blogsy

Egyptian extensions

In the ancient city once established as the capital of Egypt by the pharaoh Akhenaten during his reign ca. 1353-1335 B.C.E., archaeologists are excavating the cemetery as part of the Amarna Project. Of the 100 skulls recently unearthed, 28 still had their hair. Jolanda Bos (ABOVE) is leading the hairstyle analysis and has found that the residents were fond of braids, rings or curls around the ears, and possibły henna dye. Researchers don't know the name, age or occupation of one unmummified woman, but Bos has betrayed one of her secrets, stating that she wore "a very complex coiffure with approximately 70 extensions fastened in different layers and heights on the head."

Posted with Blogsy

Flaws by jaws and claws

The Kamine Zoo in Hitachi, Ibaraki Prefecture, Japan, has introduced a new program, not necessarily for the enrichment of the animals but to raise money for the zoo and a conservation group. They are allowing lions, tigers, and bears to tear at denim which is then used to make jeans (VIDEO HERE). The fashionably broken-in jeans are auctioned on the Internet, with the first 2 pairs going for ¥152,000 ($1,500) each. In addition to distressing the material, the activity does seem to de-stress the beasts. Zoo director Nobutaka Namae describes, “We wrapped several pieces of denim around tires and other toys. Once they were thrown into the enclosures, the animals jumped on them. The denim was actually much tougher than we had thought, and it turned out nicely destroyed.”

 

Posted with Blogsy

Prototypical pants

Behold the world's oldest pair of pants! They were found in the Tarim Basin in western China in the tombs of 2 nomadic herders. Archaeologists Ulrike Beck and Mayke Wagner of the German Archaeological Institute in Berlin believe that the 3,000-year-old woolen trousers were invented to provide bodily protection and freedom of movement while journeying and warring on horseback. Before that, men including the Iceman wore a loincloth and 2 leggings that weren't stitched together. Beck and Wagner call the combining of the pieces a groundbreaking achievement and comment, "That’s not too shabby for herders who probably thought the Gap was just a place to ride their horses through."

Posted with Blogsy

Runway roadkill

Montana may become the latest state to legalize eating roadkill, but there is another use for animals that have been killed by cars. Wear them. British fashion designer Jesse Eaton creates garments from the pelts, feathers, and bones of animals that have been killed and eaten as food, have been culled as pests, have died of natural causes, or have been accidentally killed on the road. Her Roadkill Couture™ collection is all about sustainability:

"I never, ever kill animals for our designs and we wouldn’t accept anything that has been killed for the purpose of turning it into a fashion item. What I do is take these animals, once their natural lives are over and give them an endless afterlife."

Interestingly, she offers that immortality not only to anonymous animals, but to people's pets in a most beautiful way.

 

Posted with Blogsy