Resumen de Victims of Fashion: Animal Commodities in Victorian Britain, by Helen Louise Cowie
Helen Louise Cowie's new book examines the commodification of exotic animal products and changing fashions in the Victorian Era. The sourcing of animal products, their marketing, concerns over animal cruelty, attemps to acclimatize and naturalize them, and reactions against the animal trade from the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to animals and other animal welfare lobbysts take center stage. The list of animal products considered in exceedingly broad and this constitutes a strenght of the narrative. Readers will encounter chapters on the plume trade and millinery, seal skins, elephant and synthetic ivory, alpaca and vicuña wool, animals products in perfumery and pet parrots and monkeys. The backdrop of the story includes colonialism industrialization, social reform, and the rise of a middle-class anxious to adopt fashions nimicking those worn by the wealthy. Among other things, the bok seeks to chart the relationships between anti-vivisectionist and broader animal welfare concerns
