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By Leah Dolan, CNN (CNN) — First it took hold at New York Fashion Week. Black feathers spilling out the front of a beige car coat at Brandon Maxwell. An Altuzarra knit two-piece that made its wearer look like they had been tarred and feathered, but beautifully rather than as some heinous ancient punishment. A strapless gown that appeared cloud-like through rows and rows of delicate white plumes at Prabal Gurung. The London shows were in on the game too — the cascading, multi-colored plumage of a Roksanda evening gown, or feral, feather-stuffed Converse high tops at Oscar Ouyang. In Paris, designers moved with the synchronization of a swallow murmuration. Pierpaolo Piccoli’s proposition for Balenciaga rested on feather-work: There was the full, plume-covered maxi skirt paired with a casual T-shirt, since worn in the wild by Elle Fanning, as well as a number of boxy dresses finished with delicate feather trims. For Chanel, Matthieu Blazy set its specialist atelier Maison Lemarié on the task of creating feather Camellias, headpieces, earrings and large skirts. At Victoria Beckham the dresses were smaller, but no less quilled. Even The Row, the cult favorite of every millennial minimalist, dipped its toe into the showy textile with mid-length skirts that were given a feathery facade. Stella McCartney, fashion’s stalwart eco-warrior, joined in too with the invention of the world’s first plant-based alternative to feathers. There was Big Bird Energy all over the runways this season. But how did bird feathers become a symbol of luxury in the first place? Plumage has been in fashion since ancient Egypt, when ostrich feathers were used to decorate fans and even appeared in hieroglyphics. In Babylonian and Assyrian artworks, too, feathers are often seen covering the bodies of deities or embellishing royal crowns. Around the mid-1500s, feathers entered the wardrobes of real people, at least in the UK. “That’s when they start to be worn specifically for fashionable reasons,” said Dr. Elisabeth Gernerd — a fashion historian and professor at De Montfort University in England. The ever-practical Brits worked with what they had to hand; attaching goose, chicken and egrets feathers that had been sterilized in chalk and sulfur to hats and fans. But while the material was fairly common, working people often reserved it for more everyday tools like making brooms or bedding. 18th century trend-setter Marie Antoinette popularized the style of having large, stately plumes — usually ostrich, the most prominent feather globally traded — erupting from a tower of hair. So giant were these headpieces, newspapers at the time often wrote salaciously about whose feathers caught fire from a candlelight at which ball. But it wasn’t until the 19th century, as the British Empire expanded and global trade routes became more established, that the “feather craze” reached its peak, according to Gernerd. Birds of paradise from islands such as New Guinea were hunted and skinned, then exported to Europe and the US, where they were sold to milliners at auctions in London, Paris and Amsterdam. Their exotic feathers became associated with a new level of luxury and access. “In the 19th century, the Empire was in fashion and feathers are a way to display that fashion,” said Gernerd. “You’re wearing something that has travelled thousands of miles to get to you. You’re a symbol of growing Imperialism and trade.” It wasn’t just the odd plume, either. Entire hummingbirds were taxidermied and mounted on circular, feathered fans in the 1870s; while larger preserved birds adorned velvet bonnets. By the 1900s, millions of birds had been killed for the feather trade, threatening the extinction of several species. Demand was so high, the millinery industry was even pricing out American ornithologists from buying specimens for scientific research. When the Titanic sank in 1912, one of the most valuable commodities onboard was a container of ostrich feathers being shipped to New York. “They were insured for around $2.3 million in today’s money,” Gernerd said. “They were worth essentially as much as diamonds.” But the style wasn’t universally accepted, and some campaigned against the mass slaughtering of the endangered animals. Harriet Hemenway and Minna B. Hall, two Boston socialites, turned against the fashion of their peers — launching a series of tea parties to attempt to dissuade other high-society women from wearing feathers. They founded the Audubon Society, an environmental conservation group, in 1905 — managing to influence state laws, such as the 1910 Audubon Plumage Law which prohibited the sale or possession of feathers from protected birds in New York State. By 1918, they had their first major victory: the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, a federal law that made it illegal to hunt, capture or sell any migratory bird. In 1921, the UK passed its own anti-plumage legislation which outlawed the importing of exotic birds for fashion. But frustratingly for activists, ostrich — one of the most prominently used feathers in the fashion industry today because of their unique individual filaments and diffused softness — were exempt from conservation laws, according to Gernerd, since their feathers can technically be harvested without killing or skinning the animal. Are feathers the new fur? Today, many fashion designers such as Donatella Versace, John Galliano and the late Giorgio Armani, have openly rejected the use of fur after decades of animal welfare campaigns — while luxury brands such as Gucci, Chanel, Prada and Burberry have also committed to going fur-free. Earlier this year Conde Nast announced it will no longer feature new animal fur in editorial content or advertizing across its numerous publications. But could the success of the anti-fur movement be fueling a plume boom? “Fashion designers are definitely using ostrich feathers as an alternative to fur, but it’s an ill informed decision to do so,” said Emma Håkansson, founder of ethical fashion activist group Collective Fashion Justice, in a phone interview. “Because we don’t want to kill animals specifically for fashion, we’re just replicating that same problem with a different species here.” Despite the fact ostrich feathers can be harvested without slaughtering, Collective Fashion Justice published research in 2023 that found all ostrich feather production systems ultimately kill the bird. It was Håkansson and her team who worked with Copenhagen Fashion Week to ban all wildlife materials on its runways in 2024, and who convinced the British Fashion Council to prohibit the use of fur and exotic animal skins later that year. Currently they are lobbying organizers at New York, Paris and Milan to commit to similar bans, and Håkansson is “hopeful” that their dialogue will lead to action. But change needs innovation, as well as restriction, to stick. One of the most feather-filled shows of the Spring-Summer 2026 season came from Stella McCartney. According to the fashion house, the plant-based “Fevvers” used to adorn dresses are the world’s “first ethical alternative” to bird feathers. Inventors Nicola Woollon and James West, who have protected the technology with a strict Non Disclosure Agreement, used Stella McCartney’s runway as a proof of concept. The idea, they told CNN, only took a few intense months of development. “With so many brands trying to move beyond animal-derived materials, it felt like the right moment to reimagine something so loaded with history and emotion,” Woollen told CNN in an email. “The conversation around materials has mostly focused on leather and fur. Feathers slipped through the next, and we wanted to change that,” West added. Their first foray into faux feathers took inspiration from ostrich — the final frontier animal campaigners couldn’t restrict over 100 years ago. “Ostrich feathers are the ones most associated with couture and cruelty in equal measure. We wanted to reclaim that form and give it new meaning,” she wrote. Despite the feather-filled runways of the latest season, it’s developments like Fevvers that keep Håkansson going. “What I hope people come to realize is that having policies in place that make fashion more ethical and sustainable is not restrictive of creativity,” she said. “It actually helps to produce more of it, because you have to think outside the box a bit more.”
