the abbreviated reign of “neon” leon spinks

OOPS 108
Radiation Suits at the Junior Miss Pageant
With the exception of Aztec, Maya, and Inca weavers in the pre-
Columbian Americas who fashioned garments from palm leaves, most
people throughout history would probably have seen throwaway clothing
as lunacy. From the togas of ancient Romans to Victorian matrons’ billowing
skirts, clothing was made of materials prized for durability—wool,
cotton, silk, leather—as well as appearance. But washing, ironing, and
mending all those durable garments was hard work, which usually fell to
women. To solve that problem, Edward Bellamy, author of the 1888 utopian
novel “Looking Backward: 2000–1887,” envisioned the stylish liberated
woman of the millennium as clad in disposable, recyclable paper
trousers, which would reinforce equality by freeing females from the
drudgery of hand laundering.
Bellamy may have been the first to dream up disposable clothing
for women, but it took three-quarters of a century for his idea to resonate.
After World War II, manufacturers began to make products such as
teabags and polishing cloths from synthetic fibers that were bonded together
rather than woven. (According to legend, the idea dates back to
ancient camel drivers in the Middle East, who stuffed tufts of unwoven
wool between their sandals and the soles of their feet, creating a primitive
version of the Dr. Scholl’s gel innersole.) In the mid-1950s, Wisconsinbased
paper products manufacturer Kimberly-Clark developed a new
wood-based fabric, K-200, at the behest of the Atomic Energy Commission,
which wanted overalls that could be used once and thrown away to
avoid contamination. Paper, Film and Foil Converter, an industry journal,
predicted that “garments made of K-200 will some day become an important
factor in the nation’s clothing industry.”
Kimberly-Clark design con sultant Vera de Give touted the idea of
using K-200 to make dresses. “I expect to see the time when a woman can
buy a fashionable dress for a mere nothing and throw it away after one
wearing,” she told a newspaper interviewer in 1956. That same year, Dr.
Dorothy Lyle of the National Institute of Dry Cleaning displayed a knit-