Killer Fashion

A quick and darkly funny read that traces the trends of fashion history - and each of their dangers. From garments all over the world, to the items synonymous with different eras of history, Killer Fashion reveals the risks that even the most mundane of them pose to the person wearing them. I mean, who knew that high heels, collars and even scarves had the power to kill someone?
In just 58 pages, Jennifer Wright leaves the reader with a new perspective and more knowledge on the topic of fashion throughout history, in the easy-breezy way that only humorous books like Killer Fashion seems to be able to. With the help of jaunty verses and illustrations, it manages to convey truly awful historic events in a way that both, explores their brutality and turns them on their head to give them a darkly-funny edge.
This book is the perfect way to chuckle along to and, with the format that it is in, no matter how many times that you’ve read it, you’ll be able to come back to it over and over again.

👠 Fashionably Fatal Friday the 13th Feature 🎩

While I strongly believe that clothing's not supposed to hurt you, there are plenty of people that don't seem to have a problem with suffering in the name of fashion. There are heels that ruin your feet, jeans so skinny the logo button ends up imprinted on your belly, clothes you can't sit down in, clothes that make you sweat, clothes that make you freeze, and ties that should come with a choking hazard warning.

But what lengths would you go to in order to pull off the latest style?

Is a fashionable death in your future?

I loved Killer Fashion: Poisonous Petticoats, Strangulating Scarves, and Other Deadly Garments Throughout History so much that it has inspired me to break out in poetry to give you a taste of some of the wonderfully wacky causes of death in this book.

Disclaimer: I know some of these 'rhymes' don't exactly rhyme but you will never, ever hear me claim that I think I'm a poet.


Radium's glow makes you look hot
Until your jaw begins to rot

Your fancy bra's underwire
May conduct that lightning's ire

Are you ready to break your toes
To fit into tiny shoes like those?

Dye turns dark hair pale
Until your kidneys fail

Lice crawl all around your wig
And that mouse is mighty big

A man lay dying in the gutter
"Blame that skirt", they heard him utter

Breathe in those toxic fumes
And you'll soon go looney tunes

Fake silky attire was a phase
Until it set the room ablaze

Wear makeup laced with lead
And you'll soon look pretty dead


With plenty of opportunities to die gruesome deaths for both men and women, for wearers and makers of the often toxic or flammable items, Jennifer Wright's quirky book is perfect for those strange and unusual kindred spirits of mine who gravitate towards equally strange and unusual books.

While I had heard of some of these torture devices and death traps disguised as clothes and accessories throughout history prior to reading this book, I hadn't read them in such an entertaining way before. I also learned a lot more than I would have expected from a book that's under 60 pages.

With quotes from such sources as newspapers, a magazine and a medical journal, and including citations that allow those of us who are so inclined to delve deeper, Killer Fashion is one of those books I got a lot more morbid enjoyment out of than I should probably admit.

Each fashion item is allocated two pages. One page has a paragraph ranging from a few sentences to a page of information. The opposite page has a four line poem under an almost full page illustration. Using black, white, grey and red (of course!), Brenna Thummler's illustrations ramp up the quirky factor nicely. Skeletal flapper girls dancing on stage? Brilliant! Just brilliant!

I definitely need to read this book again and investigate some of the books referenced throughout. I'm saying this with the greatest respect to the book, its author and illustrator; this would be a perfect gift book for the weirdo in your life. I would love it if someone bought a copy for me!

I received a copy of this book from NetGalley (thank you so much to NetGalley and Andrews McMeel Publishing for the opportunity) in exchange for honest feedback.

A riotous look at all the crazy things humans have done (and continue to do) through the ages to look attractive. From poisoning ourselves with lead make-up, squeezing our internal organs with corsets and strangling ourselves with collars and ties, this is a lively little book with quirky drawings and poems accompanying the text. I only wish it had been longer!

Without preamble, Jennifer Wright jumps right into the world of fashion and it's lesser know causes of violence and death.
With whimsical drawings and little rhymes, Wright manages to make the macabre less depressing and very interesting. You'll learn about death due to scarves, high heels and more. Don't believe here? Check the sources!
Interesting and darkly fun, Killer Fashion is a gift for every fashionista!

So this was an interesting read. It has poetry and illustrations. It also has a lot of deadly fashion history. It includes information on everything from lead makeup and high heels to wigs and artificial silk. A few of the facts I knew but for the most part alot of the information about particular items of clothing were new. I really enjoyed the book.

Fashion can be deadly. There is no denying that. I have gotten many scarves caught on things or stumbled in my shoes. I am sure we all have had a mishap at some point and our clothes were partially to blame. Scarves plus car doors can definitely be a recipe for disaster. I once witnessed a man get his coat caught in a bus door and the bus started moving with him running next to it. That could have ended very badly if someone had not seen it and told the driver. Fashion has killer potential.

I just finished "Killer Fashion: Poisonous Petticoats, Strangulating Scarves, and Other Deadly Garments Throughout History" by Jennifer Wright. Many of the items discussed I knew about but some of them surprised me. It wasn't so much the fact that they were dangerous that surprised me but the fact that people still continued to wear or use them when they fully knew that they could die from it. I am currently thinking of all the deadly objects that are currently residing in my closet.

I received a free copy of this book from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. Any quotes that may follow are directly from the text and are not my words.

Isadora Duncan was RedPut on a scarf; popped off her head
Fashion is silly, thought Stein
It may tear your head from your spine

I am not quite sure what it says about me when I admit that I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I could not help but chuckle and smile when reading the little poems that accompanied the information. Historical incidents for deadly objects and insidious habits are shown throughout this work, demonstrating the amount of research performed by the author. The illustrations and poetry definitely add a comical component to a very macabre subject.

My morbid curiosity led me to this book and I am glad it did. I highly recommend it.

This book is so fun, combining the macabre and dark side of fashion trends with Edward Gorey-esque art and limericks, truly it was a book after my own heart. I love the art and the snippets of information, also really appreciate the massive sources section that allows me to find out more about these interesting bits of history.

"One only has to give a dress of Chardonnet silk to your mother-in-law, she approaches the fire, she burns, and you are rid of her."
A delightfully & charmingly gruesome dictionary that proves the adage 'beauty is pain'! The illustrations & couplet rhymes between each entry are nothing short of adorable, and there's a lot of knowledge packed into the entries themselves. Everyone knows about the deadly reputation of corsets, but what about crinolines causing women to fall off cliffs by getting caught in gusts of wind? Or that influenza was once nicknamed 'the muslin disease'? Truly, my only complaint about this book is that's it does not last longer!

This book was informative and hilarious. This book really is a great example of how different our world is than the one that was around even a hundred years ago. The book lists many different former styles and how they killed people. That doesn't sound funny at all but, besides just the facts, the way the author writes, includes a funny poem, and the illustrations that goes with the blurb on each page just all adds up to a funny, quirky read. Some of the situations are funny on their own but the author gave them all an excellent spin as well. I thoroughly enjoyed the book and would love to see more like it.

A quick and quirky look at the various ways humans' bizarre need to be fashionable has resulted in illness, injury and death. Full of trivia tidbits and gallows humor, Killer Fashion shows what happens when people are just DYING to be beautiful.

I adore short quirky non-fiction especially if there are illustrations so this little e-arc fits the bill perfectly. I love the illustrations and it was an extremely quick but interesting read even though I knew quite a lot of the information already (I watch too many documentaries). It was a quirky non-fiction that I'd definitely recommend!

An interesting read, very well researched. Wonderful drawings too.

The perfect gift for your friend who always knows random facts about random things, which of course I am one of those friends! I loved this and learned so many tidbits that I cannot wait to bring up at my next social event!

The author took me on a guided tour of clothing styles through the ages. So many fashions and accessories you could literally die for. Actually, from. Rich with illustrations that added luster to an already good read.

Killer fashion is a very informative and quite an entertaining book to read. This 48-page book tackles some of the fashion mishaps in the history that will leave you shock in the end. I just found a certain illustration in this picture book to be not as exactly the trivia it wants to portray; the artwork for the Lotus Feet looks like more Japanese instead of Chinese women.

In spite of this minor inaccuracy, the facts about the invention and the terrible accidents caused by these peculiar fashion trends provides interesting information. Indeed, fashion kills unintentionally. Some will follow the fad even though they might not aware that their lives are at stake — because of fame and for aesthetic purposes, they will sacrifice anything just to appear glamorous.

The main thing that surprised me about the various ways clothes can kill you that are shown in Killer Fashion: Poisonous Petticoats, Strangulating Scarves, and Other Deadly Garments Throughout History was the sheer number of them that involved catching on fire. Wigs, artificial fabric, and shirt cuffs were all surprisingly flammable.

While (as a fan of weird cultural history) I had heard of many of these before, though, I hadn’t seen them expressed in such a charmingly grotesque manner. Each item gets a paragraph or two of description by Jennifer Wright, accompanied by an illustration by Brenna Thummler, who appears to be influenced by Edward Gorey. The black-and-white illustrations are made more morbid with touches of red for highlight and a short, four-line poem under each.

You’ve likely heard of, for example, Isadora Duncan, killed by her scarf (and shown on the cover), or the radium girls, or Chinese bound “lotus feet”, or lead used in makeup, and it won’t be a surprise that corsets or neckties can be dangerous, but I had no idea that when the top hat first appeared in 1797, it caused a riot.

Some of the history given is iffy. Although there are footnoted sources, many are internet articles, and a few pieces are wrong or misleading. For example, Wright writes of Jennie Jerome, Winston Churchill’s mother, “while wearing a brand-new pair of high heels, she slipped down a flight of stairs, falling to her death.” Except Wikipedia reports that the fall was in May 1921, and she died in late June of complications after an amputation caused by gangrene resulting from the broken ankle she suffered in the fall. I suppose that was too complicated to get into the 10-sentence page. I was similarly disappointed to see that Wright repeated the urban legend that Jean Harlow’s dyed hair was responsible for her death, based on an Atlantic article full of “maybe”s and “could have”s.

That said, this is a popular history, and in books of that type, I expect the better story to sometimes win out over the facts. Killer Fashion would make a wonderful gift for that teen interested in both fashion and death — of which there are more out there than you might imagine.

This was a really fun and quick read about all the different historical fashion choices that have caused people to set themselves on fire...

Actually, it delves into several different forms of dress-related fatalities, but I'd say a majority of them just end up being that the garment was flammable and there were a lot of candles around, so people died.

Obviously, it's a dark subject matter, but the book, with its fun graphics and cringe-y poems, lightens it. History is weird and crazy. It's really sad that so many people suffered these freak wardrobe malfunctions and died from them... but who really thought it was a good idea to wear a three foot tall wig while lit candelabras hang from the roof nearby?

***I received an e-ARC of this book from the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review

This is a fun, quick read about fashion deaths throughout history. Some were caused by the clothes, some by the manufacturing. All of the stories are accompanied by a beautiful illustration and a rhyme about the story. This would be a great table book for someone who is in the fashion or textile industries.

Oh, man, this book feeds my love for the macabre and my need for useless trivia like you would not believe.

Told in alphabetical order, this is an encyclopedia of morbid tales of clothing killing their wearer. From the obvious (corsets, asbestos, radium) to the unbelievable (do you know how many people have died from a necktie accident?) to the just plain insane (Top Hats leading to pandemonium). For such a short book, it packs one hell of a punch.

Short but sweet (well. not sweet in content). Loved the addition of the poems and the art to the short snippets of information about the deadly garments.

'Killer Fashion' by Jennifer Wright is a darkly humorous A to Z look at dangerous fashion trends through the ages.

From artificial silk, which was flammable to wigs, which were also flammable and house lice, this book talks about fashion faux pas that actually created fatalities. Each entry is accompanied by an illustration and a poem that are reminiscent of Edward Gorey. The book finishes with a bibliography section for those who want to read more about killer ties or flammable crinolines.

I had fun reading this book, mainly because of the great illustrations and poems. This is definitely one you should get the morbid fashionista on your list.

I received a review copy of this ebook from Andrews McMeel Publishing and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you for allowing me to review this ebook.

With its small size, PBS Mystery Theater* like cover art and blurb that included a corny yet horrific poem, I knew this wasn't going to be your average historical book on dangerous fashion trends and that it wasn't going to be deadly serious. (pun intended)

I feel like a horrible person for saying that it was entertaining and the artwork reminiscent of Edward Gorey along with the somewhat bad poetry was part and parcel of it all. Some of these people died horribly...because of fashion trends. Let that sink in for a minute. It was so cool to have a three-foot wig full of fleas and sometimes even a mouse and totally worth it to use animal fat to shine it up for the latest ball that people didn't worry about the dangers until it hit a candle in the chandelier, caught fire, and their lights went out, literally.

Many of the trends or items I was familiar with although there were a few entirely new to me or at least I hadn't registered them before. For example, I'd heard of detachable collars for men's shirts, but had no idea that there was a period of time where some of them were made of highly flammable plastic and if they didn't kill you that way, they were so stiff that just nodding off could cut off your air supply bringing on your meeting with your maker just as fast as the flames.

There is a growing number of small books that I could consider mini coffee table or gift books (6" X 7" or so) and this is one of them. Their fun, if not darkly fun, quick informative reads, often contain beautiful artwork, are completely more readable than the old school coffee table books (that let's face it are barely ever opened and seldom read, cover to cover) and don't require the huge coffee tables of yore.

Killer Fashion isn't going to say lives or change what you wear so much as it will entertain you and the illustrations alone make it a work of art in my opinion. It also has a really well-done section on sources that may end up sending you down a bunch of google rabbit holes as well like it did me.

Again, I should be bad being so entertained by such horrific things that happened to some of these people, but it's just so hard when you can, most of the time, see it coming and wonder why they didn't. I mean, if you see a woman wearing a fashion weight jacket and stilettos during a bad snow storm, you sort of have to figure she should know better, you know?

*If you'd like to wonder where I came up with the PBS Mystery Theater reference see http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/roadshow/fts/... The fabulous opening sequences were done by the late Edward Gorey (1925-2000) and made me a fan for life.

FYI- I received this book from Netgalley for an honest review. That doesn't change my opinion one bit, I'm all about the book, not where I got it from.

Killer Fashion listed all kind of fashionable items that ever killed people.
Each item had two pages. One with a text explaining how it had kill and mentioning an example, the other page had an illustration and a pretty sarcastic poem.

I really enjoyed it. I learnt stuff and laughed a bit too much. The illustrations were beautifully drawn and the poems, hilarious.

A perfect sarcastic read for fashion lovers and haters, though it could have been longer!

In this graphic novel, Jennifer Wright tells us about the times throughout history where fashion has caused somebody’s death. For each item of clothing/hair/makeup we have information, an illustration and (my favourite bit) a little poem.

This dark subject is approached with brilliant wit, and it’s great fun to read. Most of the stories I’d never heard of before so it’s wonderfully fresh. This would definitely make a great gift (particularly for yourself!)

A fun and interesting book about this bizarre history of fashion killing people, an unusual read which turned out to be very interesting

I thought that this was an excellent book! I loved the images, the historical facts were spot on and the added information given in the snippets with the pictures was great. I love reading books like this - I have given the book 5 stars - I really enjoyed it!