Wendy Moore
Drop Dead Gorgeous
Fashion Victims: The Dangers of Dress Past and Present
By Alison Matthews David
Bloomsbury 225pp £25 order from our bookshop
Dedicated followers of fashion have always been prepared to go to ridiculous extremes. Today we scoff at models falling off their eight-inch heels or Lady Gaga sporting a dress made from meat. The past has furnished equally ludicrous examples, such as the Georgian woman whose hoop petticoat became entangled in a ram’s horns and the Edwardian craze for ‘hobble skirts’, which prevented women from running. Yet, as Alison Matthews David’s fascinating book reveals, fashion fads have far more frequently led to tragedy than comedy.
The endless quest for the latest shape, hairstyle, colours and fabrics has lured the fashion-conscious down the centuries to don poisonous hats, toxic dresses, exploding hair combs and flammable skirts. Although women are generally seen as fashion’s worst martyrs, men have also forced their feet into high heels, strangled themselves
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
Twitter Feed
‘He has become a kind of global guru, public intellectual and consultant to the great. He is the ultimate geopolitical gerontocrat.’
From July 2022: Piers Brendon on Henry Kissinger.
Piers Brendon - Margaret Thatcher As I Knew Her
Piers Brendon: Margaret Thatcher As I Knew Her - Leadership: Six Studies in World Strategy by Henry Kissinger
literaryreview.co.uk
‘Even setting to one side the historically neuralgic relationship with ... Ireland, Britain’s insular periphery has from at least the time of the Romans presented difficulties for authorities wishing to centralise.’
Peter Marshall on Britain's islands.
Peter Marshall - Notes from the Atlantic Archipelago
Peter Marshall: Notes from the Atlantic Archipelago - The Britannias: An Island Quest by Alice Albinia
literaryreview.co.uk
Offer ends soon! Take advantage of our best ever Black Friday offer and get a year's subscription for £29.99.
https://www.mymagazinesub.co.uk/literary-review/promo/blackfriday/