Can feathered hats create spells?

"The Animal Spell"

Someone once told me that animals are people under spells, and if you fall in love with them the spell will be lifted. I recently fell in love with a black trumpeter swan. I watched her ruffle her neck feathers for hours, watched her peck bugs from her breast. I was sure she would make a beautiful bride, but she was always a black trumpeter swan. I once brushed a horse's hair for 3 straight years until it crumpled into death. The truth is there is no such thing as spells. The world is always as it is, and always as it seems. And love is just our own kind voice that we whisper into our own blood.

  by Zachary Schomburg

Perhaps he could have a woman who wears a hat adorned with black swan feathers.  Her voice could  whisper to him and the feathers might gently move with her breath.  We do fall under love's spell sometimes, even if, dear Schomburg, we deceive ourselves.

It would be quite easy to imagine that these hats could turn back into birds, don't you think?

I  think of this as the Queen Mum's hat.  Or as a hat one might wear on a warm spring day, with a light breeze blowing.  An Easter hat.  It's soft and wispy, a little bit of blue sky.

A sweet church hat.  Very pretty.  Also for trips to the city, perhaps.  It's meant to be seen on a city street.

Now this is a hat one might wear to an art gallery.  A hat with presence.

Now here is a subdued hat.  It is the perfect hat for a luncheon.  Does anyone still say "luncheon"? Maybe when the objects disappear, so do the events that called for them. Or is it the other way around?

Here is a bird who might have inspired the above hat.  The Indian head-dresses of old use feathers in the most majestic sense, but how many other cultures have made use of feathers for decorative purposes?

The imperialists took the bison and almost made it extinct.  Where are all those buffalo robes? How many bison heads still hang on the walls of European manors and chateaus?  And our once plentiful beaver - all those furs too - where are all those furs now?  Think of it.  All that labour, that fur economy that kickstarted a colonial empire.  

Birds, now, who would have thought that birds too would be harvested?  I would love to see a movie set in the late Victorian era, or the Edwardian, (which era had the largest variety of hats, I wonder) that used these gorgeously plumed hats as a primary object in its period setting. The plot would be secondary.  I want to see the ladies out and about, perambulating in parks, taking tea with a friend or two, going to a charity event, or even going to a millinery shop to purchase another hat.  Is anyone interested in writing the screenplay for this?

Or it could be about a female explorer who falls into a possessive, obsessive love with all the birds she sees, and so she must have a taxidermist and a milliner as her companions as she travels. Who will she finally choose as a mate?  Perhaps it could be a scientific romance, or a steam punk fantasy.

                                                 (These are created by Nashimiron.)



The Mad Hatter:  There is a place. Like no place on Earth. A land full of wonder, mystery, and danger! Some say to survive it: You need to be as mad as a hatter.
The Mad Hatter:   Which luckily I am. 
(From the Alice in Wonderland movie, 2010)