I have a book of Victorian fashion and the young woman in the collage is identified as Florence Dean wearing a velvet hat with birds wings and an ostrich feather collar.
Hence angry attacking birds who do not want to become further embellishments on Florence's outfits!
Victorian hats featured bird wings and bodies due to a massive fashion craze for exotic feathers, symbolizing wealth, status and exoticism, with elaborate designs using rare bird parts becoming a status symbol, leading to massive bird slaughter until conservation movements eventually curbed the deadly trend.
Did Hitchcock get inspired by a similar sighting? Lovely stuff!
ReplyDeleteThanks Michael. "The Birds" really scared me when it came out. I was all of eleven years old. Every Wednesday night we went, as a family, to see whatever movie was playing at the local theater. I remember lots of inappropriate films (for children to view) including 1960's "Psycho" and 1959's "The Tingler" starring Vincent Price. My mom was a huge fan of these kinds of movies and I guess she didn't think to leave the kiddies at home (my brother would have been 10, I was 8 and my sister was 5 around these dates).
DeleteA winging collage and a good poster for "The Birds 2" should it get made!
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