Natalie Portman stares at herself in the mirror. She’s gaunt and pale, with a red rash running down her back. A ballerina in the throes of psychosis, she hallucinates that she’s transforming into Odile, the seductive black swan in her company’s interpretation of. In a scene that’s part gripping and part revolting, she plucks a short black feather from her back. Later, as she dances her black swan to its tragic end, thick black feathers sprout from her arms.
Birds have also long been a trope in horror: In Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds, swarms of deranged birds attack humans, and in Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven,” a raven presides over a man’s descent into madness. Feathers allow a metamorphosis deeper and darker than any other. Put on a feathered gown, skirt or coat and you’re not only turning into someone else but something else entirely—a species we don’t quite understand but know we can’t control.Fashion’s zest for feathers began long ago.
By 1892, the feather business in London was bustling: One dealer made a single order of feathers that included 6,000 birds of paradise, 40,000 hummingbirds and 360,000 East Indian birds. Forty-six species of birds nearly went extinct during the craze, andran a headline in 1898 about the practice of “murderous millinery.” The industry underwent a spectacular economic bust in 1914 but picked back up again in 1927, when a feathered fan was found in King Tutankhamun’s tomb.
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