It’s hard to believe that there once was a time that literally everyone wore a hat.
I personally love hats and it’s not because I like them on my head. I love hats because they protect me from the sun. And I’m forever looking for the perfect one to do that. I can sleep well tonight knowing that I didn’t endanger an animal by trying to find my perfect hat.
Hats protect us and have historically shown status. Crazy right?
I learned a lot about felt and understand why it’s so popular and functional for almost every popular hat.
This book will talk about all the animals that were sacrificed and the general techniques used to make a hat. It’s not pretty but very informative.
Mentionable’s
• The Beaver Wars
• Guardman’s bearskin hat
• The Jewish shtreimel
• History of the ostrich and egret
• Antiplumage movement
• The history of killing and recovery of many animals that were used in hat making.
• Fur-free labels and cities
Thanks Michigan State University Press
via Netgalley.

This is such a sad book. A tragic book. The figures are mind-blowing and deeply depressing. Millions and millions of birds were slaughtered – and for some species nearly exterminated – for their feathers to decorate hats. Just awful. Not to mention all the millions of mammals killed for making the hats the birds decorated. A multi-billion dollar trade just to satisfy the quirks of fashion and human vanity. I was shocked. And remain so, as although the worst of the destruction is now over we still have fur farms and ostrich farms and so on, so the slaughter hasn’t ended. Hats and wildlife have been linked for thousands of years but previously mammal and bird use was sustainable. Then came fashion and it was no longer so. This history of hats and headgear is wide-ranging, comprehensive, informative and well-researched. I’d never thought about the subject much before so I found the book eye-opening indeed. The author admits that in some extreme weather conditions synthetic materials aren’t always as effective as real fur for outer clothing but surely the research should now be on finding more effective synthetics. I was horrified to discover, for example, that Guards regiments’ iconic bearskins are still actually made from black bears, with the MOD using the skins of hundreds of black bears slaughtered in Canada each year. All for human vanity and sense of entitlement. A must read for anyone concerned about our environment and the natural world.