9 Deadly Fashion Trends That Actually Killed People

4. "Muslin Disease"

Don't throw out your floaty summer clothes just yet, it's not the muslin that is inherently dangerous here, but the way 19th century women wore it. Around this time, the fashion was for white, flowing muslin dresses. Some women, however, thought this was a little frumpy, and so took to dowsing themselves with water before getting dressed so that the material would stick to them and turn semi-transparent.

Many of them also went commando to remain under the 3.5 kg weight limit for clothes (a law designed to prevent people wearing rich, bourgeois fabrics), also making the look even more revealing. All very titillating, except it seems that none of them ever listen to their mum's "you'll catch your death" speech, and there were outbreaks of pneumonia and influenza throughout the bitter Parisian winters, both of which could be a death sentence in the early 1800s.