Word: oudtshoorn
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...began riding in open automobiles before World War I, they had to discard their majestic hats, crowned with glossy ostrich plumes. That spelled disaster for South Africa's ostrich farmers, who fed and plucked 1,000,000 ostriches every year. On the sun-baked Little Karoo plateau around Oudtshoorn, ostrich capital of the world, farmers killed their birds by the thousands, stripped the rich dark meat from the carcasses for stew. Flocks dwindled to 20,000 birds, and many of their plumes went into feather dusters...
Last week Oudtshoorn's feather business was in the midst of a new boom. Fashion had brought the ostrich plume back to style. In Paris, Christian Dior and other high fashion designers were trimming hats with ostrich feathers. So was Manhattan's Lily Daché, who explained quite simply: "It was time for the ostrich feather to return." Oudtshoorn's farmers did not question the verdict; they crowded into the feather auction hall, offered their pluckings to dealers so sharp-eyed that they could identify at a glance the feathers from any one of 200 farms. Bids...
...more pleased than South Africa's ostrich king, 78-year-old Max Rose, who owns 8,000 birds. He sleeps by day in a hotel room in Oudtshoorn, breakfasts at midnight in his big, untidy office, heaped high with bundles of ostrich feathers, and works while others sleep. Max Rose, who has made & lost fortunes in feathers, is now apparently going to make another...
...hazards of his birds.* He managed to keep his flock together, cashed in on each tiny feather boomlet as it appeared. In 1931, the Empress Eugenie hat style started a flurry in feathers. In 1947, Great Britain's Queen Elizabeth helped start the present revival by visiting Oudtshoorn, praising feathers and publicly plucking an ostrich. This year, Manhattan's Walter Florell ("the mood at the moment is to look bold") is trimming hats with Lillian Russell-sized plumes (see cut). But he has tuned them to the 20th Century by coating them with copper, rust and gold lacquers...