Poisonings, hallucinations, illnesses, and deaths: the real 'fashion victims'

The calls fashion victims They are people who experience fashion excessively and uncritically, subordinating their judgment to the dictates of trends. But an expression that trivializes the fact that fashion has much more real victims. Until the 19th century, luxury, handcrafted, was restricted to the aristocracy, but the maturation of capitalism, the rise of the bourgeoisie, and industrialization opened consumption to a wider public, requiring new techniques, processes, and materials that increased production at a lower cost.

An example was the carroting, a millinery technique for treating animal hair with mercury, which better interlaced the fibers and made the felt more resistant and affordable. It is believed that the discovery of this technique lies in the fact that, previously, urine was used to make hats and it was when a hatter, who was being treated with mercury for syphilis, realized that his urine offered superior benefits. The problem was that long exposures to mercury in unventilated workshops caused mercurial erethism ("the mad hatter's disease"), which consisted of trembling in the extremities, anxiety and mood swings, memory loss, hallucinations or problems with coordination and speech. These symptoms were the starting point of the Mad Hatter ofAlice in Wonderland (1865) by Lewis Carroll, with behavior very similar to those suffering from mercurial erethism. The use of mercury in the field of millinery continued until the middle of the 20th century, when the Second World War claimed it for weapons production.

Mercury was not the only source of poisoning during the 19th century, as a new emerald green chemical dye, highly prized at the time for its saturation, luminous brightness and affordable price, caused serious illnesses and even death. The fashion for this green was due to the great value that nature had at the time, as an aesthetic, identity and emotional refuge from the impact of industrialization. Consequently, there was a growing tendency to associate women with nature and dress them in green, with plant prints and artificial floral and leafy ornaments on their heads, which recreated the effect of sprouting from the hair. The problem with this dye was that it contained arsenic and, as it could be found in dresses, gloves, shoes or ornaments, many women suffered systemic poisoning, since a single floral headdress contained enough arsenic to poison 100 people, true to the title of Charles Baudel's collection of poems. The Flowers of Evil (1857).

But if the bourgeois women who dressed them could suffer skin irritations, the highest price was paid by those who worked with them. Dyeing fabrics caused arsenic to enter the bloodstream and, in addition to damaging the genital area, could lead to bladder cancer. The women who made artificial flowers ended up with green, sore hands, yellow nails, and cancerous lesions, as well as diarrhea, headaches, and anemia. These workshops were among the few that didn't have cats to catch rats, since neither rats nor mice survived there.

When the First and Second Industrial Revolutions are explained in high schools, they often talk in the past tense about the inhumane conditions of the workers, ignoring the connection with the present day, when, far from being over, they have simply moved to emerging countries with low labor costs. If in the 19th century the lives of workers were sacrificed for bourgeois luxury, today the most disadvantaged continue to be victims of the bulimic consumption of the West under slave-based capitalism. The arsenic and mercury of yesteryear are the irritating and carcinogenic chemicals, dyes, and inhalable particles, not to mention the extreme physical conditions suffered by today's workers in the fashion industry; undoubtedly, the true fashion victims.