Search

Since April 2020, the U.S. Center for Disease Control (CDC) has asked for people to wear face masks in public to curb the spread of COVID-19. This shift has given rise to a mass movement of cloth m...

As skilled ‘detectives’, dress historians are experts in closely reading surviving artefacts and using them to glean evidence of the lives of those who made and wore them. With shoes and footwear, this rich, object-based approach can yield new information that challenges established histories. This article turns traditional object analysis on its head by interrogating instead the impressions and traces that objects leave behind, taking a forensic approach to footwear. It examines the rise of scientific policing and the history of footprints as a key form of evidence in crime fact and fiction. Five key British and Francophone stories and novels written between 1833 and 1931 provide a barometer of how narratives of the capital offence of murder and footwear evidence shifted during this century. These are interwoven with contemporary forensic science texts, police handbooks, newspaper articles and trial transcripts from the Central Criminal Court of England and Wales, commonly known as the Old Bailey. This article charts the shift in perceptions that occurred between 1830 and 1890, which I call the ‘Age of Conviction’, a period where there was a widespread belief in the veracity of prints, to an ‘Age of Suspicion’ from 1890 to 1930, as more scientific and critical methods of examination and recording made detectives and the public sceptical and wary of deception.

Fire was one of the most terrifying dangers for women and children in the nineteenth century. Many burned to death in highly inflammable clothing. A new, sylph-like Romantic feminine ideal in dress arose in tandem with the gas lighting that illuminated the light white cottons and almost “immaterial” materials that became fashionable during the Neoclassical period. These textiles included machine-woven gauze, tulle, and tarlatane, and they put working-class ballet dancers pirouetting near gas footlamps at particular risk. French prima ballerina Emma Livry died when her tutu caught on fire, and the charred remains of her costume are still preserved at the Musee-bibliotheque de l’Opera in Paris. In the late 1870s, another popular, mass-produced fabric, flannelette, was sold as a cheap, washable substitute for woolen flannel. Yet the soft, raised, furry “nap” of the fabric that kept children warm set them ablaze because most working-class homes lacked proper fire guards. In response to the dangers ush...

Lipstick is known to contain lead, and this has been a general area of concern. Methods of quantifying lead in lipstick currently require the use of rather harsh digestion procedures given that lipstick specimens are high in their lipid content and contain many refractory materials. A simple method of performing lead analysis in lipstick specimens based on total reflection X-ray fluorescence spectrometry (TXRF) is presented here. Samples were prepared by melting lipstick specimens along with a non-ionic surfactant and an yttrium internal standard followed by homogenization. Solid prepared samples were then finely streaked directly onto a quartz reflector, and TXRF measurements made for 900-s live time. The method was found to produce a mean limit of detection for lead of 0.04μg/g. Precisions were found to be on the order of 11–38% relative standard deviation (RSD) and apparent recoveries for lead between 92% and 106% (n = 8). Although the spreading technique may result in thickness variations that may contribute to the higher than expected variances about the determined lead concentrations, the method presented in this work does show promise as a means of performing routine lead analysis in lipstick specimens without the need for harsh digestion procedures. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

> three vanishing scars > > Forcefully remind me > > of my mortality > what if my heart … > > what if my chest … > > how would I … Bodily markings, sensations and feelings of vulnerability following heart surgery often permeate patients’ thoughts. It is during the home period of

Background The integration of humanistic approaches, in which patients' personal experiences are acknowledged and inform practice, is integral to optimal healthcare. Objectives In this study, we used an arts-informed narrative approach to understand and highlight the experiential and subjective qualities of illness and recovery from heart surgery. Methods An arts-informed analysis was conducted and we represented participants' stories of open-heart surgery through the media of poetry and photographic images. Results By using the arts as a method for analysis and dissemination, patients' unique and deeply personal experiences of heart surgery were illuminated. Conclusions The arts can be particularly beneficial in healthcare and cardiovascular research, because they can inspire practitioners to become refamiliarized with the emotional, embodied, and psychosocial perioperative experiences of heart surgery from patients' perspectives.

The process to knowing entails perpetual curiosity as well as wearied surrender in which one’s understandings transform. This philosophy describes the approach that our team took to research, interpret and exhibit patients’ narratives of open-heart surgery in “The 7,024th Patient” project – an arts-informed, narrative study that resulted in an installation that is 1,739 square feet in area and over 9 feet in height. With the intention to physically and emotionally engage viewers, patients’ stories were aesthetically translated into an installation of poetry and photography that was configured as a winding, labryinth-like path. In this article, we recount the journey of creating “The 7,024th Patient” exhibition illustrating the employment of the arts as a tool in research for acquiring understanding. In order to vividly highlight our journey, poetic excerpts and photographic images from the installation are embedded.

(2006). Vogue's New World: American Fashionability and the Politics of Style. Fashion Theory: Vol. 10, No. 1-2, pp. 13-38.

Introduction: Death by Fashion in Fact and Fiction Chapter 1. Diseased Dress: Germ Warfare Chapter 2. Toxic Techniques: Mercurial Hats Chapter 3. Poisonous Pigments: Arsenical Greens Chapter 4. Dangerous Dyes: A Pretty, Deadly Rainbow Chapter 5. Entangled and Strangled: Caught in the Machine Chapter 6. Inflammatory Fabrics: Flaming Tutus and Combustible Crinolines Chapter 7. Explosive Fakes: Plastic Combs and Artificial Silk Conclusion: The Afterlife of Fashion Victims Bibliography Index

There is a delightful feeling when you are well mounted, that those who are casting admiring glances at your horse, will find your dress and “get-up” just as perfect in their way.— Mrs. Alice Hayes, The Horsewoman, 1893At no time are the beauties of the female form divine displayed with such witching grace, the faultless flowing lines so attractively posed, the tout ensemble so thoroughly patrician. But if there be one blot in the fair picture, the charm at once vanishes.— E. Kerr, Riding for Ladies, 1895THE VICTORIAN SIDESADDLE RIDING HABIT was a paradoxical garment. It was a fashionable anti-fashion statement, masculine and feminine, practical yet alluring. While on horseback, the fair equestrian shunned the lace, frills, and furbelows worn by her pedestrian sisters. Even when the bell-like silhouette produced by the crinoline skirt was at its greatest width, the essence of the horsewoman’s garb was a lean, understated, and almost masculine simplicity. She represented the epitome of cultivated elegance and cut a fine figure in her tailored habit and silk top hat. Clad in her severe attire, the horsewoman became a center of visual attention in Victorian England. Though she graced fewer pages than the traditional fashion plate, she put her stamp on paintings, photographs, and caricatures. Preceded by showy, colorful riding costumes and superseded by breeches, caught between the demands of Victorian femininity and rising feminism, the riding habit and the women who wore it were typical of and unique to their era. The modern horsewoman represents a turning point in the history of female dress. She adopted the first sports costume specifically designed for women and opened the way for the invention of other athletic garments like the bicycling suit. The riding habit’s combination of style and practicality launched the fashion for more gender-neutral, utilitarian garments and heralded the advent of the twentieth-century working woman’s uniform: the tailored suit.

In this article, we comment upon and provide an arts-informed example of an emotive-focused reflection of a health care practitioner. Specifically, we use poetry and photographic imagery as tools to un-earth practitioners’ emotions within agonizing and traumatic clinical encounters. In order to recognize one’s own humanness and authentically engage in the art of medicine, we immerse ourselves in the first author’s poetic and photographic self-reflection. The poem and image are intended to inspire interpretation and meaning based on the reader’s own professional and/or personal context. The last line of the poem is “I take off the gloves. My hands are marked.”