← Dressed: The History of Fashion
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- [00:01]
A
Yeah, sure thing. Hey, you sold that car yet? Yeah, sold it to Carvana. Oh, I thought you were selling to that guy. The guy who wanted to pay me in foreign currency. No interest over 36 months. Yeah, no. Carvana gave me an offer in minutes, picked it up and paid me on the spot. It was so convenient. Just like that? Yeah. No hassle?
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B
None.
- [00:24]
A
That is super convenient.
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B
Sell your car to Carvana and swap. Hassle. For convenience, pick up. These may apply.
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A
Over the past 75 years, more than 10,000 chemicals have entered our food supply, but the EU allows just 300 additives. At Thrive Market, we prioritize quality, banning over 1,000 ingredients found in conventional grocery stores. Our Healthy Swap Scanner helps you find better versions of your pantry essentials without the junk dyes or fillers. And everything is delivered right to your doorstep. So shop at a grocery store that actually cares about your health. @thrivemarket.com get started for 30% off your first order and a free $60 gift. Please enjoy this episode from the Dressed Archive we will be back with season eight and all new dressed content in February 2025. The history of Fashion As a production of Dressed Media with over 7 billion in the world, we all have one thing in common. Every day, we all get dressed.
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B
Welcome to Dressed the History of Fashion, a podcast where we explore the who, what, when of why we wear. We're fashion historians and your hosts, April.
- [01:46]
A
Callahan and Cassidy Zachary. So it has been 17 years, but people are still talking about one very memorable Oscar dress. Bjork caused quite the stir when she walked down the Oscar red carpet in the swan dress created by Macedonian designer Marjan Pajosk. It's worth saying that this was not an actual swan, but it was rather made to look like one. A feathered skirt comprised the body, while a long neck draped around Bjork's own, the head resting on her chest. And in an atmosphere that often takes itself very seriously, I actually found Bjork's choice of ensemble as refreshing as it was amusing. I mean, she did actually lay eggs on the red carpet.
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B
I'm all for this.
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A
Bjork herself confirmed that the dress was meant to poke fun at the Hollywood establishment. And while numerous parodies over the years have commemorated Bjork's statement making swan ensemble, historically, the use of birds in women's dress has been no laughing matter.
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B
It hasn't. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, feathers were only one of any number of trimmings meant to accessorize women's headwear for both day and evening. But Unlike ribbons and artificial flowers, feathers used for adornment came at a deadly cost. From the 1870s to the 1920s, millions of women embraced the fashion for ornamental plumage, and millions of birds died as a result.
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A
Beginning in the second half of the 19th century, a multimillion dollar global industry thrived on the almost entirely unregulated killing of millions of birds from around the world. What some called the quote, unquote plume boom, others called murderous millinery. As fashion's demand for feathers threatened to wipe out entire species of birds. In 1913, William Hornaday wrote a scathing article for the New York Times that said, the blood of uncounted millions of slaughtered birds is upon the heads of the women. End quote. So he was director of the New York Zoological park and an outspoken bird activist and author of a recently published book for the time, Our Vanishing Wildlife. And in it, he minces absolutely no words when lamenting the doomed fates of birds such as the bird of paradise, the egret, hummingbird, toucan, condor, and emu, among many others. He wrote, quote, all are being exterminated that women may decorate their hats. The vanity of women and their thoughtless, stupid devotion to style. They have shown themselves to be a scourge to bird life all over the world.
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B
This so called plume boom might have reached its apex in the years just before the World War, the first World War. But this obsession with the purely decorative value of feathers actually finds precedence in thousands of years of human history. Just think about the exquisite beauty of any number of birds, and it's easy to understand why humans have, you know, this sort of eternal fascination with feathers.
- [04:45]
A
Agreed. And I really wonder if it is out of our desire to imitate this beauty, to take it for our own, that has historically made humans wear feathers in an effort to maybe imitate these idolized creatures. Throughout human history, birds have held positions of significance in cultures the world over, prized both for their beauty, but also their spiritual and religious associations.
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B
Take the resplendent Quetzalt, for instance. This bird, it has really long, iridescent green tail feathers, and it was revered by the Mesoamerican people and worn by their rulers in association with the feathered serpent God Quetzalcoatl. The Spanish conquistador Hernan Cortez sent numerous pieces of Aztec featherwork back to Spain after his conquest during the 16th century. And one of the pieces that he sent back actually included this very elaborate feathered headdress that was comprised of over 450 quetzal tales. It still survives Today, amazingly, as part of a museum collection at the Weltmuseum.
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A
In Vienna, also still in existence is an ostrich feather fan found in the tomb of King Tut that dates to the 14th century BCE. So, for the ancient Egyptians, the ostrich feather was associated with the goddess of truth and justice, Ma'at, and was worn on the head of both soldiers and hunters. And then, of course, there's the eagle feather, which has long been considered sacred in many Native American tribes.
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B
And the artistry of some of these feather pieces, casts or featherwork, is really, truly incredible. One of the pieces, there was nearly half of a million individual feathers that were collected from an estimated 80,000 mammo birds, which were used to create a golden cloak worn by King Kamehameha the first. He was the first ruler of the kingdom of Hawaii. In many of these cultures, the birds were actually considered sacred. Thus they were not killed for their plumage. Their feathers were acquired by either plucking or. Or picking them up off the ground after they were molted.
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A
One article I read actually that I found interesting said, quote, feathers are where fashion begin. So decorative plumage had been popular in European headwear since at least the time of the Crusades, when soldiers returned from war wearing heron feathers in their hats. And it was during the same period that women used the feathers to adorn jeweled clasps and headdresses. By the 16th century, feathers were an almost ubiquitous addition to the headwear of upper class men. But none were so grand as those worn by King Henry viii.
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B
Oh, Henry.
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Oh, Henry. Who once sported feathers from, quote, some Indian bird, end quote, that were reportedly four and a half feet in length. So rare and valuable feathers were a natural addition to the ultra luxurious wardrobe of a king known for his penchant for fashion. So perhaps more than any other ruler before him, Henry VIII recognized the inherent power of clothing. And he really used it as a visual signifier of wealth and class. So to do so, he enacted not one, but four separate pieces of sumptuary legislation known as acts of apparel during his reign.
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And we do promise at some point in the future that we will do a specific episode dedicated to the history of sumptuary laws, because they're so fascinating. Fascinating. It's all about control.
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A
Yeah.
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B
But similarly, Henry VIII's daughter, Queen Elizabeth I, she also embraced the. This sort of commanding visual authority of dress. Numerous surviving portraits of her depict a woman who's wielding this great and very palpable presence, but at the same time, palpable artifice. I mean, her Hairline was plucked really far back on her forehead. Cass, as you know, was very fashionable. Yeah.
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A
I just have to wonder how they.
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Did that and who did it.
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Yeah. Piece by piece.
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B
Is this a job?
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A
Yeah.
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How does one get this job? Yeah. Renaissance hair plucker.
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Yeah.
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But also, too. She deliberately made her face very, very pale by using makeup, some of which had lead in it. But she was always appearing in public, decorated from head to toe in this sort of elaborate display of wealth. And feathered ornaments were omnipresent to her royal appearance. And whether it be a feathered fan or part of a jeweled headdress. And many of the embellishments in her wardrobe were rare and valuable. We're talking, like, real jewels and gold and these very expensive feathers. So much so that there was actually a person in her entourage whose sole job was to follow her around all day long and pick up any of these little baubles or jewels that fell off of her.
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A
How does one get these jobs?
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B
Maybe we need to do an episode of Weird Rare Fashion Jobs. Fashion history.
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History. Yeah. It was another queen, however, who the sartorial cake, if you will, and propel ornamental plumage to its greatest heights, literally. And we will learn more about her after a brief word from our sponsors.
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B
It's worth saying, Cass, that this famous queen never actually uttered the words que mangen de la brioche or let them eat cake. This is actually a myth wielded against her by political rivals. And historically, very politically powerful women before her have been accused of saying a very, very, very similar quote.
- [10:07]
A
That statement might have been false, April, but one thing is very true. The aforementioned queen loved fashion. And feathers extravagance seems to have known no bounds in the court of King Louis xvi, where his wife, Queen Marie Antoinette, was known for her love of soaring hairstyles known as poufs. The giant confections could be adorned with anything from delicately carved ships to fruits and vegetables to feathers and jewels. Giant ostrich plumes adorn not only hair, but also the wide hats of this period. And the queen loved feathers so much that her brother Joseph II is said to have referred to her as a featherhead. Wrote her mother in a letter to her daughter. They say Your hair is 36 inches from the roots and with so many feathers and ribbons that it rises even higher. A pretty young queen full of attractions has no need of all these follies.
- [11:01]
B
And as you can imagine, this really extreme hairstyle satirists of the 18th century had a field day with these gigantic coifs Marie Antoinette's lady in waiting actually wrote this really lovely, beautiful memoir. Her name is Madame Campan, C A M P A N for any of you fashion history nerds out there who want to look her up, because you can actually download her memoir for free. But she wrote about Marie Antoinette's love of the puff, she says, or just puffs in general, to be honest. She said, quote, headdresses, with their superstructures of gauze, flowers, and feathers, became so lofty that the women could not find carriages high enough to admit them, and they were often seen either stooping or holding their heads out the windows. Others of them knelt down on the floor of the carriage in order to manage these elevated objects of ridicule with less danger. Can you imagine that? They're like they're sitting on the floor of the carriage so their hair fits in.
- [11:57]
A
And this actually reminds me because I read a story about a pouf maker who actually created a springed pouf so that you could compress your hair getting into the carriage and then it would pop back up.
- [12:09]
B
This sounds like a Carol Burnett sketch. Yeah, but Marie Antoinette's poufs, they were created in collaboration with not only her hairstylist, whose name was Leonard Auti, but also her Marchandemaude, whose name was Rose Bertin.
- [12:24]
A
And if that name sounds familiar to our dress listeners, it's because we just did an episode last week on Rose, Marie Antoinette and 18th century fashion. So if you haven't had an opportunity yet, go ahead and check it out. The ostentatious use of feathers in fashion waned in the aftermath of the French Revolution, as did all caprices and extravagance in both men and women's attire. However, feathers never entirely went away. And again, on the Internet, I came across one particularly whimsical primary source called Adventures of an Ostrich Feather of quality. I highly suggest looking it up, if you're interested. It's published in 1812, and the book chronicles the life of a feather, a beautiful ostrich feather. And, well, the first person.
- [13:11]
B
What happens in this quote, unquote, first person feather account?
- [13:16]
A
Well, there's a young woman, and she's preparing for her wedding to a man she does not love. And she and her sisters are admiring the beautiful ostrich feather that has been selected to adorn her bridal headdress. And while they're admiring it, to their amazement, the feather begins to talk and proceeds to entertain them with adventures from its long life. How I have been bandied about from one lady to another. Cried the poor feather, sometimes decorating a youthful beauty, at others struck by an awkward maid with a corking pin to set off an ugly old widow who, to use a vulgar phrase, was hanging out a sign for a second husband. Ah, the tumultuous life of a 19th century feather.
- [13:58]
B
Yeah, it seems like maybe things weren't going so well for that widow either. But feathers made appearances in women's millinery throughout the ensuing decades. But it wasn't until the latter half of the 19th century that they came back into fashion with a vengeance, a serious vengeance. And author Robert W. Doughty, in his book Feather Fashions and Bird Preservation, he was actually able to make this really detailed study of the kinds of birds that were being used in women's headwear in the United States just by reading issues of Harper's Bazaar from the years between 1875 and 1900. So where before a feather mite or two might have been used as lovely adornment to a hat, entire carcasses of whole birds were now being used to adorn women's millinery. And if not the bird's entire body, sometimes it's like individual parts. Like a hat might just have wings on it, or it might have a.
- [14:55]
A
Head on it, which is almost even more grotesque. Yeah, it's like taking apart the bird at this point.
- [15:00]
B
It's literal violence on your hat. But Harper's Bazaar wrote In September of 1875, this is a really compelling quote like that I think people are going to think is interesting. They wrote, sometimes six wings are on each side of the bonnet. There are the small wings of larks, starlings and blackbirds, and these are sold in pairs. Still other capricious trimming is wings a la Mercury, which is a pair of wings arranged at the back of the hat, just as they are on Mercury's cap. Birds will also be much used for trimming. Then sometimes these are quite large birds, such as pigeons, Bird of the isles, which I don't know what a bird of the isle is, do you? Or this next one, a lophophore. We're gonna have to look that up.
- [15:43]
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Yep.
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But the quote goes on to say that various others usually reprise for this sort of bronzed shade of plumage. Sometimes a gray pigeon nestles next to the right side of the bonnet, and in others, only the head and the breast of the pigeon are used, and maybe even on the hat. The article says that a bandeau is made up of seven or eight tiny hummingbird bodies. This, like, are we gonna cry during this episode?
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Is a Good thing. It's pretty awful.
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I think that it's a good thing that there's tissues in here. Yeah.
- [16:13]
A
And what's really surprising is to discover how many of these bird covered hats actually exist in museum collections the world over. So, of course, museums are documenting history, and this is a very sad but real part of our history. And the description you just read is not an exaggeration.
- [16:31]
B
It's not, it's not at all. It's quite remarkable, really. And there are, of course, tons of black and white photographs from this time period that document women wearing these hats, but there's nothing that quite compares to seeing them in real life. A hat with like eight small birds on it or an entire gigantic gull.
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Wing or an owl head.
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B
Yeah. And so some of this is quite shocking to us today, but during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, this was almost a ubiquitous fashion statement. It was not uncommon, it didn't seem strange, it was completely normal.
- [17:06]
A
Wrote the New York Times in 1882. Quote, Ladies nowadays think that in order to be in fashion, they must have their hats completely covered with tips and plumes. What has caused milliners to trim bonnets and hats so much more profusely with feathers this season than air before? The author of the article credited the world fashion center of Paris with starting this trend. And while this might be part of the answer, it is only one piece of the puzzle. So, during the Industrial revolution In the 19th century, technological advancements in machinery and manufacturing meant goods were mass produced more efficiently and thus affordably. And these innovations meant that more women could afford to participate in fashion than ever before. So ornamental plumage was just one of many now affordable products sold en masse in department stores and in mail order catalogs.
- [17:57]
B
It was mass distributed magazines such as Harper's Bazaar that helped to stimulate women's interest in the latest trends. But while the magazine certainly promoted the latest fashions, it also, at the same time, sometimes funnily chastised them. In 1875, Harper's Bazaar published an article entitled the Slaughter of the Innocents. And part of that article reads as follows. It says, when our fashionable ladies or fair young girls stand before a counter covered with rich plumes and the stuffed birds of rare beauty, do they pause to think how many joyous lives have been sacrificed, how many gushes of songs stilled forever so that they might deck themselves with these colors stolen from the woods, the fields and the shores? And the author of this article goes on to remind readers that birds are not the only animals threatened, nor was women's fashion. The only culprit, I mean, also endangered at the same time were other animals such as the whale, the otter, the seal, the buffalo, and the penguin. But at these times, these warnings in terms of animal rights, they really just went largely unheeded, as are most things when millions and millions of dollars are concerned. This is not a surprise.
- [19:13]
A
No, it's not. Not at all. So, of course, there was a global bird and feather industry that rose to meet fashion's demands for feathers. And the uncontested world center of this trade was London, the city William Hornaday called, quote, the mecca of the feather killers of the world, writing in our vanishing wildlife quote, London is now the head of the giant octopus of the feather trade that has reached out its deadly tentacles into the most remote wildernesses of the earth and steadily is drawing in the skins and plumes and quills of the most beautiful and most interesting unprotected birds of the world. End quote. Hunters built lucrative careers, traveling abroad to stake their fortunes in the feather trade. The purchased feathers were in turn sold at an internationally attended market that occurred multiple times a year. One order from a London feather dealer in 1892 included. Are you ready for this?
- [20:10]
B
I don't know. I don't know if I'm ready for this.
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A
6,000 birds of paradise.
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Wow.
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A
40,000 hummingbirds and 360,000 feathers from various East Indian birds. Wow.
- [20:23]
B
Those numbers are staggering, Cass. 40,000 hummingbirds. But the feathers of the snowy egret and the great egret of the heron family, those were the ones that were actually the most valued and sought after by women for their millinery. The highest quality of these heron and egret feathers can sell for about $45 per ounce. That's in money of the past. If we. If we convert that exchange rate for inflation, that's about eleven hundred dollars an ounce today.
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A
Wow.
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B
So these ornamental accessories, known as aigrettes, which is the French term for egret, some of these particular feathers, they could sell for as much as $3,000 per feather.
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A
Yep.
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B
So native to north, south and Central America, the egret is possessed of these really beautiful snowy white plumage. But the most covetable of the bird's feathers actually appear during breeding season when the adults grow these extra long, extra light, willowy wisps of feathers on their backs, their necks, and their heads. It's like a signal that it's breeding time, basically, but it's absolutely beautiful. Gorgeous. But this was the vulnerable time for these birds because this is when the hunters were going after Those particularly beautiful feathers we'll get over with a sad story soon. And yet another horrific story told by Hornaday and our vanishing wildlife. He mourned the tragic story of Layson island and Lacen island is this island about 700 miles away from Honolulu, which was once dubbed the one of the wonders of the bird world. Until a enterprising and maybe not so nice hunter from Honolulu, he hired a crew and quote, unquote, turned his killers loose onto this seaborld, you know, fantasy wonderland. And in this process, they killed 300,000 birds. So this was not unique to this particular island. Birds were hunted around the world in Venezuela, Brazil, in the Malay Archipelago and the Papua New guinea islands. And there weren't any laws to protect them. So just millions of birds are being slaughtered in dedication to the feather trade.
- [22:35]
A
But where some birds were hunted, the highly sought after ostrich was farmed. The largest of the non flying land birds, ostriches were prized for their big, sumptuous feathers. The bird had run wild in large herds in North Africa before being domesticated and bred in the 1860s. But thanks to the plume boom, the practice spread to South Africa, Europe, Australia and the United States. And the latter had farms in Arizona, Texas, Florida and California. By the 1880s, feathers were first plucked from the ostrich at about a year old, although in some accounts that I read, this did happen even earlier. And then it was plucked every subsequent year after for the span of the ostrich's life.
- [23:16]
B
And ostrich farming was an incredibly lucrative trade. In the New York market alone, annual sales went from half a million dollars annually to nearly $5 million in today's standards by the 1880s. And at one point, the value of a pound of ostrich feathers was equal to diamonds. So you can understand why kind of all this devastation was, was being wrecked in the sake of fortunes, literal fortunes. But between the years of 1907 and 1911, France imported around 76 million francs worth of ostrich feathers. And around the same time, America was purchasing anywhere from 1 to $5 million worth of feathers annually. But like Cass said before, it was Great Britain who really proved to be the largest importer and distributor of ostrich plumes. Many of these feathers were imported from the Western Cape of South Africa, which was a British colony at the time. And the government had been actively farming and exporting feathers for profit since the 1860s.
- [24:17]
A
So if London was the uncontested international center of the plumage trade, Paris and New York were its manufacturing hubs, tasked with translating Feathers into fashionable trimmings and ornaments. Prepping a feather was a laborious multi step process that began with cleaning. And this step was followed by bleaching, which stripped the feather of its natural colors before being dyed. Dyeing was a tedious process in and of itself, as each part of the feather absorbed the dye differently. So the quill or butt end of the feather could take up to 30 minutes to absorb dye, for instance, but the tip and flue could take it in as little as 2.
- [24:55]
B
The dyeing process, which seems you would have to be quite skilled in order to like get an even dye on a feather like that. But it was actually followed by another process called willowing. And willowing was where the shorter strands of feathers, known as flues, were tied together to achieve an overall longer plume. Finally, after that, the feather would be starched and then it would be curled over a blunt knife or a hot iron, much like we might do today to curl ribbon, like if you're wrapping a present. But the final stage was making the feathers into any number of fashionable hat trimmings, which could include plumes, aigrettes, osprey sprays, pom poms, pads, or wings. And wings could be of two different types. Sometimes the actual wings from the birds were used, or sometimes they were structures that were manufactured to look like wings by meticulously gluing the feathers to a foundation beneath that was completely undetectable. But the business H. Matteau, which was a New York business located at 29 West 34th street, they advertised themselves as a French feather dyer and dresser. And they really championed the dyeing and curling of feathers as one of their fine arts in bleaching and cleaning, a scientific specialty for which they were well known. So they actually even offered services where you could take your hat in and they would curl your feathers while they wait.
- [26:22]
A
And actually, that's just down the street from where we're recording.
- [26:25]
B
We're recording it is actually. That's so funny. I'm like, I'll be back. I'm gonna go get my feathers curled.
- [26:29]
A
Excuse me.
- [26:30]
B
See you in 20 minutes.
- [26:32]
A
While the plume boom might have been detrimental to the bird population, the atmosphere of many of these turn of the century workshops was a lesson in oppression and exploitation of workers. So feather swept shops down in New York City's Lower east side Catered to the mass market demand for feathered headwear. An 1882 New York Times article revealed that over 5,000 men, women and children were employed in the city's feather trade, with almost no provisions or laws. In place to protect them. Much like these birds that we're talking about, employees often worked for long hours in unsanitary and unsafe conditions for very little pay. And many of these workers were children. And there's actually a poem from the publication the sorrowful rhymes of working children, published in 1911, which underscores the role of children in finishing feathers. How does the manufacturer improve the ostrich tail? By willowing the scraggy ends until they're fit for sale? How cheerfully he sits and smiles throughout the livelong day While children knot the tiny flues and make the plumes that pay. Child labor was just all too common during this period.
- [27:38]
B
Yeah, and this is not the first time we've mentioned this, and I doubt it will be the last. As we mentioned earlier, the ornamental plumage industry was not reserved to America. In Paris, feather workshops known as plumassiers had existed since at least the time of Marie Antoinette, and I'm sure much, much further back in history as well. But we're in 1798, so we're talking right after the French revolution, There had been only 25 known plumiciers in France. By 1862, there were 120. And by 1870, that number had more than doubled to 280 plumiciers. Between the years of 1870 and 1920, £40 million of ornamental plumage left France, destined for Britain and Britain alone. But while the French plumiciers certainly exported their decorative feathered trimmings en masse, they also supplied the local fashion industry. It was, after all, these Parisian modistes who set the trends around the world. The rest of the world would follow. Now, the modiste is a profession that we might not be familiar with today, but its most basic definition, it denotes that someone is a milliner. However, a modiste was much more than just a mere maker of hats. These were basically the haute couturiers of luxury headwear in the era preceding the first world war.
- [29:00]
A
So around 1905, Modiste began to experiment with creations that threatened to defy gravity. By 1910, hats had reached these epic proportions, and I am talking huge.
- [29:12]
B
Yeah, you're not kidding.
- [29:13]
A
Hats could extend as wide as 3ft in diameter from a woman's head. Much like Marie Antoinette's poufs. These hats provided an expansive canvas for hat makers to really exploit their craft and their artistry to the extreme. Cecil Beaton wrote about these enormous hats, quote, perched on their heads and elevated by a little roll just inside the crown, where hats, which had grown as frivolous as the milliner's trade could make them enormous galleons of gray velvet with vast gray plumes of ostrich feathers sweeping upwards and outwards. Birds and feathers were the favored trimmings of a legion of French modifiers that included Alphonsine Caroline Ribeur and Gabrielle Chanel. It is perhaps a lesser known fact that Chanel was actually a hat maker and stylist before she was a fashion designer, having opened her first shop in 1910.
- [30:03]
B
And these milliners creations were made for famous by a bevy of international singers and actresses. You have to remember at this time in the nineteen teens, the Hollywood film industry didn't really exist. So these actresses and singers were really the, you know, the celebrities of their day. But there's one star in particular who made feathered headwear. Her signature, nicknamed the human Avery by Cecil Beaton. The French chanteuse Gaby Deli was famous for her towering be feathered hats. And these hats, they are really where the iconic showgirl costume finds its roots. Cecil wrote. He said her taste ran amok in a jungle of feathers and ospreys. She wore indeed virtually anything. Jewels, lace, furs, and always feathers galore. Swan's down paradise, osprey, egot, even cock and chicken feathers. So Dali's penchant for the over the top adornment was aided by the fact that she was at one time the mistress of Harry Gordon Selfridge, the owner of the famous Selfridge department store. And reportedly she was just basically given free rein over anything and everything that she wanted from the store. And some of our listeners out there may be familiar with her character from the TV series Selfridges.
- [31:20]
A
Absolutely. And I love, absolutely love D'Eli. And she was as fascinating as her hats were high. And I'm excited to say that she'll be the subject of an upcoming episode.
- [31:30]
B
And Cass is very excited about this.
- [31:31]
A
Very excited.
- [31:33]
B
And now to the final chapter in our murderous millinery saga. But first, a word from our sponsors. Shopify is a global commerce platform that helps you sell at every stage of your business and sell more with less effort. Thanks to the Shopify Magic, your AI powered all star sign up for a $1 per month trial period at shopify.com redcircle all lowercase go to shopify.com redcircle now to grow your business no matter what stage you're in. Shopify.com redcircle wow.
- [32:09]
A
What's up?
- [32:10]
B
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A
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- [32:41]
A
It is perhaps not surprising that just as women's hats were reaching monumental proportions, so too was a plume boom reaching its zenith in the years just before World War I. In a nine month period in 1911, the London market alone had sold feathers from nearly 21,000 birds of paradise, 40,000 hummingbirds and 130,000 egrets. It was in 1913 that William Hornaday published his desperate pleas to fashionable women everywhere to stop the slaughter. After many decades at this point, and his New York Times article entitled Murderous Millinery, Hornaday minced no words when blaming women for the plight of so many birds. He simultaneously charged women with their salvation. Quote, the whole matter is up to the women, he wrote. On their heads is the blood of the slaughtered innocents.
- [33:31]
B
And Hornaday was not alone in this assignation of blame to the quote unquote, fairer sex.
- [33:36]
A
What is with that?
- [33:37]
B
I don't know. Like, can we stop saying this? But there, there are lots of articles and cartoons that lambasted the sort of vain and hard hearted women for wearing feathers. One cartoon in Punch magazine from 1892, it depicts a woman as a bird of prey herself, with wide, expansive wings, and her claws are poised to strike her helpless songbird victim. Well, yet another in the magazine from a few Years later in 1911, it depicts a fashionably dressed, quote unquote French milliner shooting, actually shooting exotic birds. So in this time when women were not even deemed worthy of the vote, it's perhaps not surprising that their vanity received the bulk of the blame in the feather industry and not the thousands of male hunters, male feather merchants, male dealers from around the world who actively profited from the feather trade and promoted it.
- [34:32]
A
Yeah, and actually, in reality, women were some of the most vocal and effective opponents of feathered fashions. In fact, the existence of today's thriving National Audubon Society, which is an organization solely committed to the protection of birds, is indebted to the efforts of two pioneering women, Harriet Hemenway and her cousin, Mina hall. So in 1896, the two Boston socialites set up a series of afternoon teas in hope of convincing their affluent friends to stop wearing birds and feathers on their hats. Over 900 women joined their anti Feather cause, the result of which was the creation of the Massachusetts Audubon Society.
- [35:11]
B
And thanks to the Society's efforts, bird protection legislation was passed in the state of Massachusetts in 1897. A Massachusetts woman who wears feathers is now an offender against the law and is liable for a fine, wrote the New York Times. But in the state of New York, they were not quite ready to do the same. A similar law had recently been rejected by the state's governor. It was said it may not be possible to overcome fashion by statute, concluded the authority. However, the Massachusetts Audubon Society was determined to try, and their movement was slowly beginning to gain momentum. By 1898, the state level Audubon societies existed in over a dozen states across the country. And in a culmination of organized efforts and growing advocacy across the nation, eventually a national Audubon Society was founded in 1905.
- [36:05]
A
And through its various chapters across the nation, the Audubon Society educated the public with numerous lectures and publications, as well as bird and conservation classes. They ensured their cause remained in the public eye through a series of boycotts, public protests, and even exhibitions aimed solely at convincing women to wear bird free or bird friendly headwear, nicknamed autobonnets.
- [36:28]
B
Autobonnets. I love it.
- [36:29]
A
Yeah.
- [36:30]
B
Did they get fined?
- [36:32]
A
Yeah. It is worth noting that the organization did condone the use of feathers of some domestic fowls and game birds, such as geese and ducks, presumably because they.
- [36:42]
B
Were meant to be eaten.
- [36:43]
A
Yep.
- [36:44]
B
Right. Foodstuffs. But the Audubon Society was actually really instrumental in enacting real change throughout state and eventually federal legislation. In 1900, the United States Congress passed the Lacey act. And this was the first federal law in the nation to protect birds and other wildlife by making interstate commerce of these particular protected species illegal. It was the first in an important series of landmark legislation in the fight for bird protection. In 1901, the Audubon model law was passed that protected water birds from plume hunting. And in 1910, New York City finally enacted the Audubon Plumage Law, which prohibited the sale or possession of feathers from protected bird species. So similarly to ivory hunting today, enforcing these new laws against illegal bird hunting, it was actually quite dangerous and could sometimes be deadly. Guy Bradley, who was the very first Audubon game warden, was actually shot and killed in 1905 when he was trying to arrest a plume hunter.
- [37:49]
A
So the tremendous efforts of the Audubon Society were mirrored in the United Kingdom with the founding in 1889 of the Society for the Protection of Birds, later the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. And like the Audubon Society, the organization was founded by a woman named Emily Williamson, and its early membership consisted entirely of women who proved an active and effective mobilizing force in a campaign against the feather trade. So, like their American counterparts, the society was not against all feathers. Quote, lady members shall refrain from wearing the feathers of any bird not killed for purposes of food. The ostrich only accepted, and that was one rule. And as we know, the ostrich was one of Great Britain's greatest commodities. Similar bird protection organizations popped up across Europe. Both the Dutch association for Bird Protection, the German Federation for Bird Protection were formed in 1899, and the Irish Society for Bird Protection was also formed around the same time. The Danish Ornithological Society was formed in 1906, followed by the French League for Bird Protection in 1912. So you're really starting to see the momentum build here. And the international lobby against the bird trade was just impossible to ignore at this point.
- [39:00]
B
And as to be expected, any bird protection efforts or legislation was met with a huge backlash from the feather industry. In France, the Association of Feather Merchants and Manufacturers vehemently denied and defended themselves against any accusations that they deemed false, as did the textile section of the London Chamber of Commerce and the New York Milliners Merchant Protection Association. So many feather dealers and merchants perpetuated lies in the media. One popular myth was that the bulk of feather collection was done humanely, that the feathers were picked up from the ground after it was shed naturally or plucked from a live bird. In the case of ostrich farming, this was true. However, ostrich farmers falsely claimed that the process did not harm the birds. One feather farm in Florida went so far as to claim that the dwindling number of herons in the state was a result of a change in the bird's habitat due to settlements in the area. However, really horrific photos of the devastation wrought by hunters of these birds provided all the evidence to prove that that was, you know, completely to the contrary. But still, the fashions for feathers persisted.
- [40:12]
A
Until modiste declare their survival of the smallest, wrote Vogue in April 1913. Just when it looked like hats could not get any bigger, they shrunk to a mere fraction of their former size. Fashion had declared that the era of wide, expansive hats was over, never again to return. These hats were replaced by narrow, closely fitted styles that anticipated the cloche hats of the 1920s. And this dramatic shift in headwear signaled the beginning of the end of the plume boom. And I would love to posit that fashion changed in accordance with a moral imperative for the lives of birds. But that is simply not true. When Modiste declared small hats the fashion of 1913, they first did so under a cloud of vertically inclined feathers. So diminutive have hats grown, wrote Vogue, that they are saved from insignificance only by a bewildering wealth of fantastic plumage. It was only with the outbreak of World War I, when any necessary embellishment or luxury was deemed out of place, that the demise of ornamental feathers was secured.
- [41:16]
B
So in line with this change in fashion came American and Great Britain's strengthened commitment to bird protection. In 1918, President Wilson signed the American law, the Migratory Bird Treaty act. And to this day, it stands as one of the strongest laws protecting wild North American birds. Following this Migratory Bird Treaty, Great Britain passed also their own Plumage Prohibition act in 1921, and this prohibited the importation of feathers into Britain. That is of course, with one notable exception. You may remember, as we've mentioned several times now, that the ostrich industry was really integral, profitable part of the British economy. So despite fashion overwhelmingly abandoning the ostrich feather in women's headwear, Great Britain actually campaigned for its continued importance, even regulating it as part of official court dress in 1922. And they were doing this as an attempt to promote this imperiled ostrich feather trade.
- [42:16]
A
Yeah. So I'm sure there are Downton Abbey fans out there listening just like me. And we probably all remember the ostrich feathered headpiece that Rose wore when she was presented at court. And she paired it with this exquisite panniered robe to steel. It's definitely one of my favorite TV costume moments of all time. But I digress. Despite the tremendous efforts of feather trade defenders, however, fashion only continued to advance towards modernity and simplicity in the ensuing decades. And the dramatic use of feathered fashion simply became passe. In 1919, there were 425 plumassiers in Paris. In 1980, there were five. Today, hats, once the single most important accessory a woman could wear, have all but gone out of fashion. And yet the plumacier trade still survives. Maison Le Marie, founded in 1880, still serves the fashion industry today. And a controlling interest in it was actually purchased by Chanel in 1997. The company uses non restrictive feathers such as swans, peacocks and ostrich, mainly obtained from South Africa. Eric Charles Denacien, an actual former employee of the Maison, is another of the rare pommassiers who survive today. And I've seen his work. So many fashion designers use him. He's truly a gifted artisan. But unlike Lamar E, Eric prefers to haunt the Parisian taxidermy shops and flea markets for the wear of his trades. Yay.
- [43:40]
B
So he's upcycling basically. So today plumiciers are absolutely the exception, but bird protection societies are the rule. You too. If you are interested, you can become a member in any number of one of these bird protection societies. In France, it's the French League for Bird Protection. In Great Britain it's the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. And in the United States it's the National Audubon Society. And there are other similar organizations around the world and members that number in the millions. So fashion's past love affair with feathers is gonna have to probably remain just that, a part of fashion history until next time. May you appreciate your bird friendly wardrobe next time you get dressed.
- [44:25]
A
Dressed will be back with season eight and all brand new episodes in February of next year.
- [44:30]
B
But until then, remember, we love hearing from you. So if you would like to write to us, you can do so@hellodressedhistory.com dressedhistory.com is also where of course you can register for our tours, our trips, our new class, anything else that we have up our finely tailored sleeves.
- [44:47]
A
That includes April's twice weekly in person fashion history tours of the Metropolitan Museum of Art as well as our brand new dress to School of fashion live online course, the 1950s Golden Age Haute Couture which is now open for registration. And we do have gift cards available for both April's tours and the class. So just send us an email@hellorusthistory.com and also send us an email if you want to get on the first to know lists for our New York City Day tours coming your way in April 2025 and our Paris fashion history tours coming your way in June. Registration for both of these tourists tours will open in January and we do expect them to sell out. So send us an email to get on those lists.
- [45:27]
B
Thank you as always for your continued support. Dressed will be coming back your way for Season 8 in early February. The History of Fashion is a production of Dressed Media.
- [45:41]
A
Yeah, sure thing. Hey, you sold that car yet? Yeah, sold it to Carvana. Oh, I thought you were selling to that guy. The guy who wanted to pay me in foreign currency. No interest over 36 months. Yeah, no, Carvana gave me an offer in minutes, picked it up and paid me on the spot. It was so convenient. Just like that. Yep. No hassle.
- [46:04]
B
None.
- [46:04]
A
That is super convenient.
- [46:06]
B
Sell your car to Carvana and swap hassle for convenience, pick up these may apply.