In the 18th century, it was considered the height of fashion to wear false eyebrows made out of mouse skin.

English dandy Beau Brummel was so petrified of soiling his shoes on the pavement or of having a hair blown out of place that he used to order his sedan chair to be brought inside his house so that he could board it there. And he never used to raise his hat to a lady because he was worried that he wouldn’t be able to replace it as precisely the same angle.

Boy George was sacked from his job as a shelf-stacker at Tesco for wearing the store’s carrier bags. Tesco considered his appearance to be “disturbing”.

Philip, Prince of Calabria, the eldest son of Charles XIII of Spain, adored gloves so much that he often wore 16 pairs at a time.

When Clark Gable removed his shirt onscreen to reveal that he wasn’t wearing a vest, sales of vests dropped by 40 per cent.

At the end of the 15th century, men’s shoes had a square toe. The fashion was promoted by Charles VIII of France to hide the fact that one of his feet had six toes.
In the 16th century Italy, it was fashion for women to colour their teeth.

A member of Queen Victoria’s family gave her a bustle which played “God Save the Queen” when she sat down.

In the royal courts of India, blue-blooded women used to change their clothes several time a day. They never wore the discarded garments again but gave them to slaves instead.

The first pair of Doc Martens were made form old tyres.

It was considered elegant for aristocratic ladies of the 16th century to grow their pubic hair long and tie bows and ribbons in it.

In their quest for an hour-glass figure, some Victorian women wore corsets so tight that they suffered broken ribs.

In a recent survey, one in ten Americans admitted that they bought an outfit with the intention of wearing it just the once and then returning it to the shop.

Designer André van Pier created a bra adorned with 3,250 diamonds. It cost £641,000.

Early bras were made form two handkerchiefs tied together by ribbon.

False eyelashes were invented solely for Hollywood. Producer D.W. Griffth wanted to enhance actress Seena Owen’s eyes for the 1916 film Intolerance and had a wigmaker weave human hair through a fine gauze.

Married men in France use more cosmetics than their wives.

When Louis XIV of France occupied the city of Strasbourg in 1681, he ordered its citizens to adopt French fashions within four months.

40 per cent of women have hurled footwear at men.

The average woman consumes 6lb of lipstick in her lifetime.

Madonna’s famous “Bullet Bra”, worn during her Blonde Ambition tour in 1990, was based in an antique breastplate worn by Italian soldiers.

Elizabeth I made the wearing of hats compulsory for anyone over the age of seven on Sundays and holidays. Failure to do so would result in a fine of 3s 4d.

The plastic bits on the ends of shoelaces are called aglets.

Yul Brynner wore nothing but black fort the last 45 years of his life.

Women across the world started wearing slacks after Marlene Dietrich looked good them in the 1930 film Morocco. What they didn’t know was that director Josef von Sternberg had out Dietrich in trousers to emphasize the lesbian tendencies of her screen character.

Most lipsticks contains fish scales.

Men didn’t wear underwear until the 16th century.

The first hair perm in 1906 required the client to sit for six hours with a dozen brass curlers in her hair. Each curler weighed nearly 2lb, making it the equivalent of wearing 48 large potatoes on her head.

When zips in clothing were tentatively introduced to Britain in the 1920s, people were worried about their reliability. To allay these fears, a huge zip was put on show at the Wembley Empire Exhibition of 1924. By the end of the exhibition, it had been zipped and unzipped three million times without catching.

François I of France hated beards with a vengeance. So he made the wearing of them punishable by death.

Marie Antoinette was so modest that she always wore a gown buttoned right up to her neck – even in the bath.

The final Curious @ phrase:

“Fashion is made to become unfashionable”

(Coco Chanel)

Anyone who has bought a lot of different pairs of shoes will tell you that different companies have different interpretations of shoe size. While this might not be a problem for children who will eventually grow into a larger size, it is important once your feet stop growing to have a shoe that is not too big.

If you have ever pulled gray clothing out of a washing machine that used to be white, then you know the importance of washing black clothes separately. Not only will washing white clothes with black damage the white clothes, keeping black clothes from fading also takes special care.

Lets get one thing out of the way: The 70’s and 80’s spawned some of the worst uniform ideas imaginable.

TV characters from the dawn of the broadcast era have inspired viewers through fashion.

Since its debut in 1959, an anatomically improbable molded plastic statuette named Barbie has become an icon. Ruth Handler undeniably invented an American icon that functions as both a steady outlet for girls' dreams and an ever changing reflection of American society. This can be seen in the history of Barbie's clothes, and even her various "face lifts" to suit the times; in her professional, political and charitable endeavors; and more recently in the multi-culturalizing of her product line.