Feather-brained folly?

If you look round a typical Sunday congregation, I suspect you won’t see many women wearing hats.

earth watch Simon Marsh

Although you would never have seen my granny in church without a hat, with changing fashions, and perhaps a more relaxed interpretation of 1 Corinthians 11: 13, it’s a rare sight other than at weddings. But in the 1880s hats were de rigeur for women, and the latest millinery fashion that was storming polite society was hats with feathers. Feathers of birds like grebes and egrets, and in more extreme cases even whole birds, adorned voluminous headgear in late Victorian and Edwardian society.