There was one serious (many would say shameful) side effect created by this bourgeoning Edwardian fashion fad however. As you can imagine, with all these feathers on show, it was the international bird population that took a pretty big hit, especially those with bright or distinctive plumage. There seemed to be no end to the ‘creative’ scope of the milliners with the feathers of herons, egrets (known as ‘little snowies’), peacocks, birds of paradise and parrots invariably in their sites and, if you could afford it, you could even have a whole hummingbird! Not to putting too fine a point on it, the future of these specific birds, and indeed many others, was under serious threat. Nothing seemed to be off limits. Use was made of single tail plumes, whole wings from pigeons and other birds, imitation flower and feather sprays (referred to as aigrettes – from the French word for egret) attached to the hat by decorative pins or clips and even, according to a couple of French postcards in my collection entitled ‘Mode Chanteclair’, what seems to be pretty much a whole chicken! One image which came to light during my research featured almost an entire owl draped around the crown of a hat and another story emerged of an Ipswich lady whose husband banned her from wearing her hat in the countryside during the shooting season. The reason? The lady’s hat was festooned with an almost complete pheasant! Just think about it for a moment. Who in their right mind today would walk around with pretty much a whole bird on top of their head?