OSTRICH FEATHER VOGUE

Shannon News, 12 November 1926, Page 2

OSTRICH FEATHER VOGUE

“SLUMP” IN SOUTH AFRICA.

CAPETOWN, Sept. 24. For nearly ten years the ostrich feather industry of South Africa has suffered a severe slump. Farmers who, year after year .have kept their birds alive in the hopes of ostrich feathers again becoming fashionable in Europe and America, have at last given up and in certain districts of South Africa there has been witnessed the melancholy sight of carts parrying the carcasses of ostriches which were to be sold for meat. Other farmers have ' also loosed their birds, being unable to feed them any longer and these ostriches are now running wild on the veld. For over a year musical comedy and revue artistes in New York, London and Paris have been trying to introduce the vogue of the ostrich feather once again by flaunting feathers and fans before the admiring audiences. The Dolly Sisters, for example, always wear a feather dress during their dancing act in Paris,'and recently at Deauville they even produced feather-trimmed, bathing costumes. These efforts had their effect and there is just a possibility of a boom in ostrich feathers. The centre of the feather industry in South Africa is Port Elizabeth, and it was there this week that Mr. L. F. Penny, manager of Messrs. Mosenthal and Co., was interviewed on the possibility of a feather boom. “I think it is certain that things will improve somewhat,” he said, “bigger hats are in favour this season, and neckwear has come in considerably. Womenfolk have decreed for such a long time that feathers should not. be the fashion, and fashion entirely dominates the trade, that I think that feathers will be coming back in favour. The Union Department in London is doing what, it can to assist, and is making efforts to popularise feathers with French milliners and dressmakers. When the ladies go back to feathers we will come into our own again,” concluded Mr. Penny. Sir Lewis Richardson is another authority who is inclined to view the future with a modicum of optimism. “I think feathers will come back gradually,” he said, when approached for his opinion. “Feathers, I think, will never .be more than a small sideline in farming; they will never again see a return of the good days that have gone by, but I do look to their return to favour to a certain extent. I would not like to say that we will see their revival; it may be 10 or even 20 years hence, but they are going to have a better time of it one day.”