Your life work is not simply to attract man or please anybody, but to mould yourselves into a grand and glorious womanhood. - Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Greetings to all from Central Texas, where Mother Nature appears to be ushering in a glorious Spring with this recent stretch of beautiful, warm, sunny days. It’s the least she can do after that freeze bomb a couple of weeks ago. Hate when that happens. Happy to report the very suspect Texas power grid is holding steady so far, at least in our neck of the woods.
Aside from the weather, one of the many things I look forward to every February is our local library’s Blind Date With A Book event. The staff selects dozens of their favorite books, wraps them in brown paper, and offers them to intrepid readers. This is my sixth year participating in this literary roll of the dice. Unlike other times I have had blind dates, in the book version I have only been disappointed once. And it was not this year! My book blind date this year is The Feather Thief by Kirk Wallace Johnson.
The Book Powers That Be must’ve known I am always looking for non-fiction topics to share with my readers. They definitely did not disappoint when they put this book in my path. Ostensibly, The Feather Thief is about the elite fly fishing lure industry. Yes, there is such a thing. But in the process of educating us about this very niche specialty hobby, this book meanders into all kinds of historic rabbit holes absolutely ripe for attention here at Live and Learn.
For example, early in the story we discover that hundreds of millions of birds died during what the author calls ‘feather fever’.
I wish I could tell you this ‘feather fever’ described an unfortunate random genetic mutation resulting in a worldwide avian epidemic. Alas. The fever was figurative, referring to a fashion trend rather than a biological condition. But its results on the bird population were devastatingly literal.
Feather fever spanned nearly one hundred and fifty years, from the late 1700s to World War One when finally, thankfully, women’s fashion broke free of the Victorian era millinery industry’s iron grip. The author speculates the trend of wearing bird feathers really took flight when Marie Antoinette donned a diamond encrusted plume given to her by her husband, the King of France, and, seemingly at random, stuck it in her hair.
Marie was a major influencer in her day, when her head was still attached to her body. Feathers as fashion were nothing new. But after her feather-adorned likeness appeared in fashion magazines, feather fever soared.
At the time, the feminine ideal was all piles of hair and corsets and hoop skirts. And heaven forfend if you ever wore an item more than once. Demand for bird skins skyrocketed; the more exotic the bird, the more sought-after their feathers. Three guesses on the impact this had on bird populations around the world.
Initially feathers were sold individually. But as the demand exploded, supply shifted to price per pound. Think about this for a minute. How many feathers would it take to equal one pound? Any idea? I mean, seriously—feathers are virtually weightless, right? So yeah, you would need to kill a lot of birds to get a pound of feathers.
Exactly how many depends on the bird and the size of the feather. The author tells us it takes 800-1000 Snowy Egrets to provide a kilo of feathers (one kilo is a little over two pounds).
Just typing that last sentence makes me sick to my stomach.
At one point the price per ounce for premium Snowy Egret feathers exceeded the price of an ounce of gold by 60%. Needless to say, killing birds is way easier than mining gold. Feather hunters swarmed known bird habitats, looking to make some easy money.
Like most idiotic fashion trends, feather fever eventually ran its course. The campaign for women’s suffrage began in the mid-1800s. The movement consisted of a lot of women fed up with a lot of stuff; arbitrary fashion expectations being very high on the list.
In 1880 Elizabeth Cady Stanton gave an enormously popular lecture basically telling women to wise up, that life was about much more than educating themselves on The 10 Top Ways To Attract A Mate.
A similar fashion backlash was occurring in Great Britain. Much as wearing feathers became all the rage a hundred years earlier, not wearing them was now the popular thing to do. In America, the Audobon Society maintained ‘white lists’ of clothing manufacturers who did not use birds. In both countries, women leveraged their version of social media and employed posters, pamphlets, and signage to berate and protest the use of feathers in the fashion industry. Cartoonists joined in the public shaming. I can’t share them with you here because I don’t own the rights, but give a click here and here for two doozies published by the British weekly Punch in 1892. I get the impression the Punch cartoonists were the Banksy of their day.
Now of course the millinery industry was not sitting still for any of this. Initially they tried to pooh-pooh the protests (interpret as ‘silly women who don’t know what they’re talking about’). They encouraged their lobbyists to push back on this anti-fad, trotting out the usual scare tactics of dire consequences on the economy if the feather industry disappeared. Their efforts were in vain. The author uses the perfect word to describe what had happened to the custom of using feathers in the fashion industry: it had swung from fad to stigma.
Eventually anti-feather activism was embraced by those at the top of the power pyramid. Queen Alexandra of Britain came out against the use of rare bird feathers. Legislation was passed protecting birds, establishing wildlife sanctuaries, and regulating the feather import industry.
Other societal changes combined to finish off feather fever. After the First World War, few had the spirit or the budget to maintain the elaborate wardrobes of the previous era. And in one of the oddest societal coincidences, a rather large nail in the feather fashion coffin emerged in the form of the invention of the automobile. Kinda hard to maintain your dignity if you are forced to clutch an enormous flapping hat to your head while traveling in an open-air vehicle capable of the mind-bending speed of 20mph.
The Roaring Twenties ushered in, among many other things (and yes, there will be a future post on this topic) a seismic change in women’s fashion. All the legislation was very instrumental, but the bottom line was that the demand for feathers completely crashed. Not in time to save millions of birds, unfortunately. But perhaps to remind us that there are times, with the fortuitous combination of motivation and circumstances, when everyday folks do in fact have the power to effect meaningful change.
I will leave you with three things:
You will be relieved to learn Snowy Egrets benefitted mightily from the legislative protections enacted in the 20th century. Their population is now affected more by climate change factors rather than the capriciousness of the fashion industry.
Local author Andrew Pinson has a new book out about his behind-the-scenes experiences working at the Austin-Bergstrom International Airport.
We started with some gloriousness, so we will end with same. Carolina Jessamine is just about indestructible. Mine survived the cold snap and is loving this mild weather. Do you have some jessamine in your garden? Share some pix with me in the comments.
My latest book, Double Fault, is available now on Amazon.
When an investigation of illegal match fixing by the Russian mob brings the FBI to her tennis club in the person of hunky agent Wilson DuBois, Veronica Burk vows to help him solve the case quickly before her own very successful gambling habit falls under suspicion.
My historical fiction book, Ventured, is also available now on Amazon.
When she takes a chance on making a new life for herself, French orphan and cutpurse extraordinaire Belle must find a way to survive in the New World—or she may not live long enough to enjoy it.
My YA trilogy is also still available if historical fiction isn’t your thing.
Brody Morgan grew up starring in commercials for his dad's mega food corporation. What will Brody do when he discovers what he's really been selling?
That's very sad about the snowy egrets. I always thought feathers were obtained from domestic species, not that it's much better, but it seems awful that wildlife was plundered like that. Glad it doesn't happen now, although I guess domestic birds are still used for stuffing coats etc. I once had a down coat for winter, and the feathers kept coming out of it as if to remind me of the sacrifice made. In the end, I gave it to charity!
I did love the library's blind date with a book idea. They seem popular on social media too, lots of small businesses are making them.
Wow, I never thought about how the fly fishing and milliner industries would have culled birds. Thanks for informing us, Lissa, and thank goodness for wildlife protection advocacy!