Strange but True Fashion Facts

Fashion has played a large part in society for hundreds of years. As trends change, people adapt, not wanting to be left out of the fashion world. Some people have created their own fashion with success, others have tried yet failed. Still others have failed but paraded around as if they were the most fashionable of all anyway.

Over the years there have been fashion statements, fashion faux-pas, fashion hopefuls and fashion disasters. In the 18th century it was even considered fashionable to wear fake eyebrows made from mouse skin! As mice were caught they were skinned and cleaned and shaped into eyebrows which the well-to-do and fashion plates of the times glued over their real brows.

False eyelashes were invented for Hollywood producer D.W. Griffith who wanted to enhance Seena Owen's eyes for a 1916 film. The eyelashes were made out of real human hair.

Long before that era women were applying color to their faces by many different means. In Cleopatra's time berries and other natural ingredients were used to enhance the face. Nowadays different ingredients are used in the making of colors for the face. Today's average woman uses 6 pounds of lipstick in a year but few of them know that one ingredient frequently used in manufacturing lipsticks is fish scales.

The oldest son of Charles XIII, Prince Philip of Calabria, loved gloves so much that he sometimes wore 16 pairs at a time. And, at the end of the 15th century, Charles VIII of France tried to find more comfortable shoes for his feet, one of which had 6 toes. He had shoes designed with a square toe, which came to popularity immediately after he began wearing them. The first pair of Doc Martens were made from old tires. Little was it known how popular these would become.

Marie Antoinette was modest about her body so she wore gowns which buttoned all the way up to the top of the neck. She was so modest, in fact, that she wore these gowns even while bathing!

Elizabeth I loved hats so much that she made it mandatory for all females over the age of 7 to wear a hat on Sundays and holidays. Anyone who refused to do so was stiffly fined.