I’m hoping you may remember my post last month on the term “fashion victim.” I had a reply from Heather, who went out and did some proper research on where the phrase came from. She’d been rightfully suspicious that the term arose as recently as a comment by the designer Oscar de la Renta, and her doubts proved correct.

Heather’s research took her back as far as 1828. She searched journals in ProQuest and found references in a fiction piece in 1853, a racist cartoon in Harpers Bazaar dating to 1883, and newspaper mentions from the Chicago Daily Tribune in 1913 and then in the 1970s. The term appears regularly in literature from the 1970s on. I followed her trail, and found the same results; then I realized that I couldn’t spare the time this summer for a really serious expanded search into Newspapers Index and other periodical databases.

My apologies for not following this well-laid ground. Perhaps someone will take this subject up seriously for an academic paper or project? I did find something online, however, that indicates that being considered a fashion victim is still quite unwelcome, and this was addressed to men! As is this illustration in the Digital Gallery called “The Victim of Fashion,” dating to 1880. Anyway, I’ve learned my lesson, and will be careful about quoting dubious attributions in the future. More in my next post…