The Victorian era was the golden age of taxidermy. Upper-class women wore hats made from real dead animals — birds, mammals, fish, and reptiles — as a sign of high fashion. Wearing a stuffed animal on your head was considered the peak of haute couture.
Taxidermy as art gained serious public attention when English ornithologist John Hancock displayed a series of mounted stuffed birds at the Great Exhibition of 1851. That showcase helped push preserved animals firmly into mainstream culture.
Whole birds were the most common choice. Milliners would mount them with wings spread or posed mid-flight directly onto hat brims.
The more exotic the animal, the more desirable the hat. Rare species from distant corners of the British Empire were especially prized among wealthy Victorian women.
These hats were not cheap novelties. They were status symbols, worn to social events to signal wealth and taste.
Victorian fashion also embraced other strange traditions, such as post-mortem photography. Taxidermy hats fit neatly into an era that treated death as something to display rather than hide.
When you think about it, the Victorian age was pretty fucking weird and kind of pointlessly shitty, with these goons just showing off their gaudy bullshit and acting all hoighty toighty. However, that cat one does look freaky.
Even though I’m not a cat fan, that poor cat looks like roadkill that was stuffed without any facial repairs
Suddenly, that morbid scene in fantasia makes sense. Putti are helping the lady centaurs get ready for meeting the men, and one of them has two doves land on her head; the putti arranges the doves’ heads and wings, and the centaur wears the birds as a hat.
That Victorian era was a wild time! Dibs on the puss choker!
The cat as a hat
It is terrifying for me to think about taxidermy. I must admit that some of these are pretty cool.