Chemistry and High Fashion
By Eric Woller, Professor of Chemistry

It’s late 1857 in London. You’ve settled down in the reading room of your Piccadilly mansion to enjoy a cup of tea and read the latest edition of the Illustrated London News. When you get to the fashion section, you cannot believe what you read. Described is an account of Empress Eugénie (wife of Napoleon III) arriving at a Parisian ball wearing a purple dress! Purple! Knowing her current preference for crinolines, the amount of purple dye needed to color this amount of fabric must have cost a small fortune, probably a large fortune!