A little bit of museuming

One of my sisters can't travel all that easily so she asked me to visit the Bill Cunningham Exhibit in her stead. Today was a good day to go.

I had suspected that the exhibit was in the tiny exhibition space on the second floor, and it was. Most of the exhibit was devoted to the excellent documentary about Bill Cunningham which I had already seen.

Cunningham had spent much of his early life in fashion as a milliner.

He adored feathers and many of his hats and hair ornaments are full of feathers.

If you aren't in New York, watch the Bill Cunningham documentary, the exhibit isn't worth a special visit to the city or to the museum. But right down the hall, there was a fabulous exhibit on the use of feathers in fashion. It seemed almost like a sly dig at Cunningham's use of feathers.

The use of feathers in fashion drove some bird species to extinction.

Aigrettes, in particular, are now extinct due to their being so highly desired in hat making and hair ornament making. This diamond and aigrette ornament is breathtaking. It just used a precious couple of feathers but hats often just plonked the whole bird on top as decoration.

Please forgive the poor quality of my photos.

Fans also used sprays of feathers.

This dress was trimmed with swansdown.

This bird ended up as half of a scarf and muff set.

It was also possible to buy Jewelry made of bird heads.

Environmentalists pushed for the banning of the use of birds in this way. There were attempts to use alternative methods of hat trimming that evoked feathers without harming any birds.

If you read women's magazines form the late 19th and early 20th century you can see the debate about the harm created by overhunting exotic birds. One alternative was to use fabric trim to create hat trim. Another solution was to use the feathers of readily available domestic bird feathers like chicken and turkey feathers. Between the two exhibits were a collection of artifacts from the Women's March.

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