Paul Poiret and the fickleness of fashion
Such was Paul Poiret’s influence that he is the only couturier whose clothes are known to have caused several fatal accidents. At a time (1910-11) when fashion was loosening up he persuaded chic women into the hobble skirt, a garment so narrow round the ankles that only tiny, mincing steps were possible, with the result that several tripped over when stepping down from a pavement and one toppled from a bridge into a river where, unable to swim from the constriction around her ankles, she drowned. In Mary E. Davis’s book, however, this dangerous garment gets only a brief mention. Instead, what we have is not so much a biography
