Strangely enough, it was while 18-year-old chemist, William Perkin, was busy researching a cure for malaria that he accidentally ended up changing the fashion world forever. The year was 1856, and one of his experiments ended up going terribly wrong, creating what seemed to be nothing more than a murky mess. As he examined it, however, William noticed a beautiful color radiating from the petri dish. Thus, it became the world’s first synthetic dye and introduced the world to the color mauve.