9 Weird Victorian Era Fashions That Will Turn Your Stomach

From very tight corsets to poison dresses, many strange styles and trends were popular in the Victorian Era — 1837-1901, when England, the leading economic and military power at the time, was ruled by Queen Victoria. Perhaps it was the atmosphere submerged in wars, epidemics and strict social systems that made the Victorian taste so bizarre. This influenced fashion. And the oddities she created still surprise us today.

O awesome.club prepared a list of the strangest fashions of this Era.

The tone was called Paris Green and was also used as a pigment to paint walls. Painters knew that many people who worked with such a chemical died, but for some reason they just didn’t make the connection between arsenic and these deaths.

It was a shade of green that looked beautiful on dresses, but when in contact with water, it released a chemical that was fatal to people.

There was a fashion when clothes were decorated with beetle wings. These animal parts were easy to obtain and easy to use. The insects gather by the dozen when they mate and then die, leaving their little wings to the “gatherers”.

At first glance, it looks quite grotesque, but it is possible that the sparkle and vibrant color of the wings attracted so much attention from the Victorians that they decided to use them as sequins, which were sewn into their dresses to embellish them. If we didn’t know they were beetle wings, we would probably consider it a nice detail.

Pieces made with hair were considered a type of accessory for people who were mourning the death of relatives. Over time, other people took a liking to accessories and started using them; they ultimately meant that they had someone to love, like a husband or a son who had just gone off to war.

There were bracelets with braids of human hair, bags and wallets made with hair or locks, inside glass medallions.

This is perhaps the most bizarre fashion, and consisted of putting lots of feathers and even whole stuffed birds on top of hats. Demand grew so much that the bird population began to decline. Fortunately, the trend did not last for many years, as movements such as the Audubon Society appeared in the magazine Harper’s Bazaar, for the protection of birds. Many of these movements were led by women trying to contain the situation, a sort of PETA (entity that fights against the abuse of animals) from the Victorian era.

Although they didn’t cause as many deaths or fainting as is imagined today, the corsets of the time produced absurd side effects. They were so tight that, in addition to limiting the woman’s breathing and causing muscle atrophy, they changed the shape of the chest bones and the internal arrangement of the organs. The inside of a nineteenth-century woman looked nothing like a modern girl’s.

Fortunately, this did not make them more prone to illness or advance their deaths. The image above shows how doctors believed the body deformed. And while the changes weren’t as drastic as imagined, that didn’t make the practice any less cruel.

Skirts expanded in volume with early 19th century fashion. They grew so much that the layers of skirts, by themselves, did not achieve the desired proportion; therefore, a piece called a crinoline was incorporated, a kind of “cage” of steel rings attached with a string, which gave the dress shape and great volume.

The device also allowed women more mobility, but only in the legs and only in theory, because the skirts were so exaggeratedly wide that, in some cases, when walking through a door or trying to get into a carriage, the girl could run the risk of getting trapped. . There are even some photographs from that time, like the one shown above.

Underwear protects one of the most delicate areas of our body. So, apparently, the panties of the time, which exposed the private parts, don’t seem to fulfill their purpose.

However, it’s possible that girls didn’t think that way in the Victorian era. A woman’s ritual for dressing was long. She wore layers and layers of skirts over the metal frame, so her physiological needs became a true odyssey. In that sense, the fact that the panties were open made things a little easier.

The children wore, from birth to school age, approximately 4 years, a dress with veils and lace. The more detail the dress had, the richer the family of the baby or child, who tried to present their opulence through their children’s clothing. Regardless of gender, everyone wore the dresses, which can be a little weird these days, as kids tend to dress in a more childlike and personalized way, according to their gender.

Middle-class life expectancy during the Victorian Era was around 45 years. Death haunted the cities with wars and epidemics such as cholera, tuberculosis, syphilis and smallpox. Therefore, people lived in mourning for many relatives. Many women wore black for years, which led to the emergence of a kind of mourning fashion.

Middle-class women could not regularly buy black dresses once a relative died; therefore, they dyed some that they already had. The buttons must also be black, as well as her jewelry. Those who could afford it wore black pearls or jet-black stones. Jewelry that did not have to be black was made from the hair of the deceased. There were very strict rules regarding the period of mourning. For example, if a woman wanted to get married and was still in mourning, her dress should also be black, like the bride in the image above. It may seem strange these days, but it was the practice at the time.

What fashion trend do we have today that you think will be seen as weird in the future? Tell us in the comments!