Origin of a Barbarous Fashion.
By Nation
SOME seven years ago there appeared in Paris, at a ball of the demi-monde, a woman wearing on her head-dress a dead bird. The bird had artificial eyes, and its wings and tail were spread out so as to give it a life-like appearance. It was a small, stuffed bird, not a bird’s skin stretched on wires. Its introduction as an ornament in fashionable bad society was not received with much favor at first, although the wearer succeeded in attracting attention to herself by the singularity of her adornment. This was all that she desired or intended to accomplish by fastening a bird’s corpse to her head-gear. She had not the slightest expectation that she would be imitated even by her immediate companions, still less that the whole world of fashionable good society in France, England, and America would “fall into line” at her heels. Probably her only thought was that the oddity of her costume would serve as a striking advertisement, like “S. T., 1860, X.,” and cause her to be talked of among the males and females of her kind. Strange, indeed, are the caprices of fashion. Seven years have passed by; and we find the eccentricity of a woman of the town becomes the craze of millinery,—so great and deadly a craze that State legislatures are considering bills to prevent the extinction of our song birds and of all birds not too large to be worn on the bonnets of women and children. Nothing more revolting to good taste can be imagined than the “remains” of an animal fresh from the dissection of a taxidermist as an adornment for a lady’s forehead. The very suggestion ought to excite horror and disgust, as well as pity for the slaughtered songsters of the grove.—Nation.