bonne + lime love = b.Limey!
The Fabulous Kate Gilbert writes in the last edition of b.Limey: “In the haute couture fashion world, green is considered bad luck so many designers avoid it. Madame Carven was one of the first (and only?) successful designers to use lots and lots of green.”
Way to pique my imagination, Kate! Superstitions, fashion, luck, mystery, intrigue – all just the stuff we are made of over hereaaah @ChicKnits…
So onto the Fashion History Ride, where we find:
“According to Liles, Scheele’s green or arsenic sage was introduced about 1770. Although it was extremely poisonous, it was used to dye cotton, linen and paper.”
Liles states that “Napier complained bitterly in 1875 that the dye was still being used and that it poisoned the maker, the winders of yarn dyed with it, and the person using the dyed article.” (p.145)
“He adds that it was particularly dangerous when used on wallpaper and that there is good evidence that the arsenic from the wallpaper in his bedroom on St. Helena killed Napoleon and poisoned some of his servants.”
The STUFF that TOOK DOWN the tiny Emperor? The arsenic in the dye itself was the culprit!
More from the Victorian Web:
“At Guy’s Hospital in London a surgeon had been presented with many patients suffering from sore eyelids and lips and lung and throat complaints, and he was the first to isolate a univerul cause. A cheap and widely used type of wallpaper was decorated in green foliage and flowers, the pattern made up in thick relief of arsenite of copper. Under heat or agitation from brushing or cleaning, particles of dust would slowly poison people in the room.”
And there’s the flip-side of a favorite color: the POPULAR color!
And you thought Avocado green refrigerators were LETHAL…
*****************************************
more on Madame Carven, the petite grand couturier, who, for the love of lime, defied the superstition: “It all began when Madame CARVEN decided to establish her own Haute Couture house on the Rond Point des Champs Elys
