5 Absurd Historical Fashions That Were the Style at the Time

5 Black Teeth

Depending on what happens with the fluoride in our water, a trend we might be headed back to sooner rather than later! Though you’d have to take an intercontinental trip to Asia to arrive where black teeth had their heyday. Popular in Japan (but not limited to it), the practice was known as “ohaguro,” and they used iron filings and vinegar to create a tooth dye that would leave you with a smile that looked like you’d just polished off an oilcan. It continued for a remarkably long time, up until the Meiji restoration in the late 1800s.

4 Live Animal Jewelry

Around the turn of the 20th century, the hottest accessory was jewelry that well, wasn’t. It was actually live lizards, attached to women’s outfits as a bit of moving, breathing visual interest. Chameleons in particular were hot commodities, given their ability to match any outfit. The lizards in question were restrained by a leash that would be pinned to the bit of clothing they were looking to spruce up. 

Unsurprisingly, the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals disapproved of the practice, and waged a campaign against live lizard jewelry. When that failed to stamp the practice out, the Humane Society joined in, finally ending it once and for all.

3 Lightning Rod Hats

Notice the long, string-looking things dangling from the back of the hats shown above? Those aren’t a slip of the brush or decorative strings, but grounding wires. The hats they were attached to? Wearable lightning rods. They were decorated with a metal ribbon, and worn during inclement weather in 18th century France, with the idea that if you were unlucky enough to receive a smiting, the hat would send the electricity coursing harmlessly to the ground. What were men who were looking not to be fried from high above to do? They had their own grounding accessory, umbrellas with long lightning rods poking out of the top.

2 Crematory Urn Headdresses

Balancing the cremated remains of a loved one on top of your head is pretty much never acceptable, unless you’re trying to escape a flood with your most prized possessions. For French women around the time of the Revolution (not entirely unrelated), the trend of the time was the pouf. This was an outlandishly tall and detailed hairpiece of headdress that was half-hairdo, half diorama. The decorations balanced atop these neck-stressing towers got quickly out of hand, and could feature anything from small models of boats or cities, or apparently for mourning but still fashionable women, crematory urns.

1 Radioactive Makeup

In the early days of our awareness of radioactive materials, they were the hottest thing around. After all, if you haven’t yet figured out all of its horrific downsides, radioactive material is very cool! For its part, radium saw all sorts of regrettable uses, including in facial creams. Unlike other entries on this list, it didn’t make you look visibly outlandish. It mainly just didn’t work. Still, as the only trend on the list capable of causing your bones to disintegrate, it still deserves a nod for overall ill-advisedness.