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