With Corona-virus pandemic fully on, fashion texts almost got locked in contradiction. On one hand, we are offered the new trends and must-haves which we really must try before the lost summer 2020 is lost completely. On the other hand, this crisis has drawn more attention to sustainability and the ethical side of fashion (or, should I say, unethical). This discourse isn’t new, and its last huge hype was at the turn of XX century. The Young King, a fairy-tale by Oscar Wilde, be it written today, would perhaps be published in The Vogue magazine and quoted by every eco-conscious fashion-blogger. As the story goes, a young king-to-be sees three dreams on the eve of his coronation ceremony. In those dreams he faces Greed, Death and Famine claiming lives of people working at his astonishing dress for the ceremony. Filled with sorrow and sympathy for those people, the king comes to the ceremony dressed as a shepherd… Reading the Victims of Fashion by Alison Matthews David feels almost like stepping into this fairy tale, but, perhaps, much deeper, because suddenly we realize that an unpretentious “shepherd look” could have claimed more lives than the richly decorated royal gown.
The book Fashion Victims: The Dangers of Dress Past and Present is an extensive research of fashion through the prism of damages to life and health caused to both consumers and producers of clothes. The book is mesmerizing, easy to read and feels more like a novel. Every fact is served as a story, often very personal and detailed.
The author, Alison Matthews David holds a PhD in Art History and currently works as an associate professor in the School of Fashion at Reynors University.
So, what is the first thing that comes to mind when we hear the word combination “victim of fashion”? Our imagination starts creating the phantoms of crazy fashionistas who starve themselves to death or obsess about latest designer creations showing off their incredible taste and devotion to the shifting ideals of beauty. It’s them, it’s not us. Most of us like to separate ourselves from fashion, especially its not-so-pretty sides. The whole ethos of wasteful frivolous lavish fashion is built around the idea of drawing a boarder between ourselves and seductive perils of trendy outfits. But let’s be honest, who are the actual victims of fashion? Most often it’s us, ordinary people who wear ordinary clothes and other ordinary people who make those clothes. No matter how hard we try to set ourselves apart from the “dark sides” of fashion, it is here. It often hides in the simplest things, such as a pair of socks, an innocent T-shirt or a lipstick.
The book Victims of Fashion invites the reader to take a journey to the trenches of Napoleonic wars, streets and theatres of Belle Epoque and suffocating factories. On the way you will get acquainted with real mad hatters, devoted ballerinas and cry over every child whose cotton nightgown has caught fire. And in the end of this journey, just when you start thinking that all of this horror is a matter of the well-forgotten past, the author will remind you of the present. Numerous illustrations – from caricatures and advertisements, to X-rays and medical drawings – make this book feel almost like a cabinet of curiosities.
What I liked the most: Despite the fact that this extensive research puts a lot of ugly facts into the lime-light, it is not anti-fashion and it does not aim to criticize “the rich” or “the fashionable”. To some extent, it points at human monstrosity and hypocrisy. Through the mirror of fashion, it mirrors us. When flea poison saves thousands of lives from typhus and becomes an efficient weapon of genocide, it’s us, not fashion. When we stay happily unaware of how many workers ruined their lungs adding the fake holes to make our jeans look cool, it’s also us, and not just fashion.
For whom:
For the general audience: if you have never thought where your things come from, and who makes them, this book will open up a new perspective, and, perhaps will make you more attentive to these details. A possible side-effect – you might start avoiding green garments… and many other garments. Or, you might want to follow the steps of XIXth centuries doctors and upper-class ladies who took action and intervened.
For fashion professionals: if you are researching fashion production, history of fashion, or sustainable fashion, Victims of Fashion will be a good addition to your library. This book especially addresses clothes designers and manufacturers offering a challenge – instead of sticking to “out of sight out of mind” attitude, it offers to take responsibility and take into consideration everyone’s safety at every step of making of things that we wear.