Hi!
It's your
*clap* meme
*clap*
MooOOOooOOOmmm
Boys and girls of every age,
how would you like to see
Woah!
Wait.
It's "wouldn't you like to see"?
Something strange!
Basically,
I don't know what it was about Victorian era,
But most of like,
weird,
sh*t
is usually Victorian.
Like usually when ... when I see something really weird and old,
nine out of ten cases, it's from the Victorian era.
And I mean, like, home decoration, fashion
Like, they just had so many grotesque things and I'm not sure why
There's just something about, like, Victorian aesthetic
that's like so kitsch, grimy and weird sometimes,
that I absolutely adore!
That is why today we're going to delve into
weird things they did with fashion.
Some of them are a bit overrated, I mean.
Sometimes you hear those things about Victorian era and you tend to believe those things
just because it was a long time ago and we dont really know what happened
And, you know, anything that's weird seems believable,
but it's not always the case and there's a lot of stereotype
including, for example, corsets,
that we tend to believe nowadays
that weren't as bad as we think they were.
But some of those things actually existed and,
I mean, if you look at them nowadays,
it's kind of gross.
So,
(C O U G H)
I'm gonna start off with things they didn't know were wrong.
And that, for example, was using
arsenic
as a colouring,
for example in clothes,
or, like, wallpapers.
It's weird because they knew it was kind of connected--
like, you had those cases of people
dying because they worked with arsenic,
but for some reason they didn't - it didn't quite click.
So there's this shade of green that's called
Shceele's Green
and it was basically arsenic
And the pigment was used as a coloring pigment.
(Is pigment always coloring?)
Anyway,
So obviously that doesn't sound like a great idea, but
back then it didn't really
like, there was a lot of chemicals that they didn't really
check before they use them.
So they were just wearing arsenic dresses.
So obviously that is not the best idea they ever had
and it's not like anyone who wore a dress like that died instantly.
It's more about gradually
intoxicating your body and if you really liked that shade of green and if you
surrounded yourself with items like that. For example, your wallpapers might get wet--
there is just some kind of chemical reaction
that can lead to you breathing in those chemicals it
and
it doesn't have to be that big amount of arsenic to kill you.
So that is why you could literally be dressed to kill! ...
... yourself :)
So that's one thing.
Again, I think nowadays it's a bit stereotyped because it's such a ridiculous thing.
Like why would you dye your clothes with arsenic?
But I'm not sure to what extent it was actually
used and to what extent it actually caused people to die, literally.
But it sure affected their health heavily
as if there weren't enough things in the 19th century that could easily kill you.
So another thing, which is kind of gross, but it's also kind of cool depending on how you see
using
insects
as a form of decoration.
So basically there was this trend to decorate your dresses with beetles -- not beetles as in, like, whole
bugs, but they used beetle wings that actually look really cool,
and I can kind of see why because it looks - like the color is really vibrant.
(C O U G H)
Stop it.
Get some help.
Oh, my god, this is so good.
Okay, so when I first heard about this, I was kind of like that sounds gross,
like, why would you use pieces of insects
to decorate your dress and, like, what form can it even have? Like, are you gonna just put a huge beetle
on their chest?
Or like are you gonna use the legs and like put them in some sort of ornaments?
That's so
D I S T G U S T A N G
But then I saw the actual dresses and, boy, was I hooked. Like, they look amazing.
Basically, you can't really tell that those used to be
Insects or, like, bugs and just the color is so vibrant and so pretty and it's also shiny.
It's kind of like 19th-century glitter.
So I - I can't really blame them for wanting to use those kind of the creations.
The other thing though is that a lot of people did it so I can only imagine
that it must have affected the population of those types of beetles in 19th century.
But then that's not the only animal that was affected by 19th-century fashion, which I'm gonna discuss
in a bit!
(While laughing) What was that?
That's the kind of, like, a gross
Victorian trends that I can approve of, because it looks
gorgeous
And they used it very often on those, like, white cotton dresses, where you could really
clearly see the ... all the decoration and stuff.
It was kind of, like, a really nice contrast. And, funny thing is, you can still buy those yourself
nowadays because they're still used as the creation sometime. Basically the way they did this is they
had the wings and they had to, you know, drill a hole inside the wing.
And then they would just, kind of ..
koind of?
what was that?
"koind of"
Ugh, that's...
It's not even funny
And they would just use them as sort of beads and they would just, you know, sew them onto the dress.
So another thing ... it's kind of... it's not really that disgusting.
It's just so weird. So basically in Victorian era you
witness a lot of people die during your lifetime.
Like it was a norm to lose, like, four of your own children
and then lose your husband when you're, like, thirty-one or something.
And it was pretty common to basically
d i e
(wheeze)
No, but really, like, when you look at the statistics
the children just died like flies.
It was really uncommon for you to reach
what we nowadays call an old age.
And basically if you read Victorian books, it's very common to call someone who's, like, 40 an old lady.
So it was really different back then and because death surrounded you
it was just such a common thing that you
Tended to be in mourning a lot
And that's why Victorian mourning fashion was so complex and it was, you know
you had every detail sorted out because it was a huge part of your life. Sooner or later
You're gonna have to wear mourning. back then it was like a whole
ritual that took months and years and we had different phases of it;
you have different symbols also affected the fashions.
So for example the very first stages of mourning, you know
you had to wear completely black and then additional colors were added in later. One of those things that were
included in those kind of like early stages of mourning were like all mourning accessories, which is kind of weird.
But, I think it was for the people that actually missed their loving ones it, you know,
they felt like it's all properly done and they're respecting them in some way.
Whereas for people I know it sounds terrible, but I think there were plenty of people that were forced to mourn after
someone that they didn't necessarily miss.
So, for let's say you were married to a 70 years old guy and he suddenly died of a heart attack and then you were
forced to wear black for a couple of months and like not participate in any kind of fun events.
So, I think that's what made it a little bit sweeter
was the fact that you are allowed to have all those fancy mourning accessories. So, you'd have special brooches,
you would have jewelry, you would have a memorial die-cast --
which was something like a sort of like a very pretty card.
You know, remembering your beloved one.
That leads me to hair jewelry! Like, who wouldn't want to wear a bracelet made of your
loved ones hair? But they did. They use hair and
they made jewelry of it.
It was considered this kind of like somber type of jewelry. Like usually it had
something to do with mourning. In Poland, they used hair jewelry
after the January uprising failed. And it was kind of like there was this whole mourning
fashion trend among Polish women which was kind of like a political statement and it was supposed to be like grieving after
Poland basically a failed attempt to gain independence again. So that's when the hair jewelry was used extensively.
But in other countries, it was mostly, supposed to - it was like a mourning thing, but not
always because I've seen some examples where it clearly has nothing to do with mourning
It was just kind of like a trend. My friends showed me a bag made of hair recently and, as gross as it sounds
it didn't actually look that bad because when I first heard like hair jewelry
I was kind of like I imagine just like bracelet with like, you know, like oh, I'm gonna try and make it
That's what I imagined
right
Then I googled it and I was like that's actually really pretty. You actually really can't tell it's made from hair because it's
really
Intricately done. Sometimes looking at like 19th century handiwork
I'm like
there is no way anyone could ever do that nowadays because it's just so
tiny. That's what I feel looking at those hair jewelry pieces.
They usually used like small strands of hair and they would just intertwine them to make like nice
Ummmmmmm
Yeah.
But they also used pieces of hair like not
tangled at all as a form of remembering someone and that was a really long long
custom that nowadays, if you go to a museum, it is very common to just look at someone's
piece of hair, basically. Like, a lock of hair.
That was a thing. But, most of the time you can't really tell that it's hair because it's just so nicely done.
It was used in rings and bracelets. You would have a necklace made of hair
that wasn't anything that unusual you would have earrings with pieces of someone's hair in it.
As disgusting as it sounds that's actually a very like slow fashion
content right there. The very last thing is we're going back to killing animals for fashion!
Like, when it- when it comes to furs
I kind of understand because they didn't have any artificial sort of fabrics back then.
It was impossible to make something
warm without using natural ingredients be it either wool or, in the colder tempatures,
fur was the only thing that made you live.
So if you're, for example, from Poland to Russia, and the temperatures were like, way below zero most winters.
The thing was different when it came to like, decoration.
A lot of animals died during the 19th century for fashion, but I think the most spectacular
example was the way they use birds for their hats and it wasn't really a thing
until -- like it was a thing in the early 19th century when
it was popular to like, decorate your bonnets with feathers and stuff
but it was like, you know, you had two feathers and that was it. It wasn't until like
1870s and 1880s when it was becoming more and more popular to kind of involve some sort of
a piece of animal on your head
So basically, you would have either a whole wing or in some cases
especially in the later 19th century like 1890s
you would have a whole freaking bird on your head and like I'm not saying that's weird, but that's freaking weird.
The thing is though. It looks pretty awesome. Like, I'm not gonna lie. I love the effect,
it just looks so dope. It's like, I don't know. There's just something about the whole shape and like the whole
proportions, but it just looks really cool with the whole silhouette.
But, the problem was a lot of women started doing it -
like, not themselves obviously, like they didn't kill birds and put them on their heads
No.
But like, you know, the more women wanted it
the more manufacturers had to kill the birds and it became an
increasing problem. In the late 19th century
there was actually this whole movement like women against wearing dead birds on their heads, basically.
Okay, that wasn't the actual name of that society, but there was a society
that was what I would say like grandmas of modern vegans. And they were like, "we're killing all the birds.
Can we stop?" And it's cool because it's kind of like, you know
we tend to think they didn't care or like they didn't know anything about it, and then there's this society, and
I even read some articles in Polish magazines from the era, like, from early 20th century.
I think that was where they complained about using too many feathers. They were kind of like: can we just use flowers instead?
Because this is getting ridiculous. I think it's really cool because it shows that in the late 19th century
The mindset started to change and that's all that -- what happened in 20th century.
But, since we're still talking Victorian, then yes; Victorian women did in fact wear birds on their hats. It's funny because
sometimes they make them look alive, like, the way they pose the bird on the hat would suggest it's about to, like,
take off and just fly away. So these are all the disgusting Victorian trends that I wanted to share with you.
:)))))
And I'm pretty sure there's more there's probably a lot more that I know myself and I forgot about
That's just the way I am
So yeah, um
enjoy the rest of your day,
and I'm gonna go and get some more of these cookies before they're all gone because
that sh*t was delicious