Wearing Wild Birds: Global Skins, Parisian Exhibitions and the Business of Naturalists (1870–1910)

Between 1870 and 1910, a new trend in fashion – quite bizarre from today’s perspective – featured entire birds displayed on women’s hats and clothing. Paris excelled in crafting such artefacts. Yet a public concern about the threat this caused to some species emerged, which led to the first preservation movements. The ‘hat-with-bird’ phenomenon is a worthy case study for analysing how wild birds turned into glamorous commodities as well as the involvement of naturalists in this process of commodification of birds. This article approaches the subject through the vistas of the nineteenth-century Parisian international exhibitions, as they were paradigmatic showcases of a global economy that was eager to show all animals’ utility. At the same time, large efforts were required in distant lands for transforming birds into a global natural resource, as the journeys of hummingbirds and birds of paradise will illustrate. Although they lacked a scientific purpose, I argue that hats decorated with birds were in many respects the business of naturalists.