The Hat That Killed a Billion Birds: The Decimation of World Avian Populations for Women's Fashion

During the late 1800s and early 1900s, it was common practice for milliners to decorate women's hats with birds' feathers and plumes--and sometimes with the birds themselves. Huge numbers of birds were killed for this fashionable enterprise to the point that entire species were eliminated and others were placed in endangered categories. Lawmakers and bird aficionados were slow to react to the effects of this practice, which went on almost unabated for a quarter of a century. Then, noted naturalists like George Bird Grinnell, William T. Hornaday, and President Theodore Roosevelt, who recognized the economic benefits birds provided, banded together to pass meaningful legislation to protect them and to curb the production of murderous millinery.

This book explores the troubled history of millinery and its complicated relationship to birds and conservation. Eventually, thanks to the efforts of many individuals and groups, this period of the millinery era did pass, but the author seeks to explore why it took so long for the fad and practice to come to an end.