Fluffy Fashion Feathers

Boas and Pythons, Brother!

Wearing feathers for fashion is almost always to show the wearer is trying to show some measure of style, sophistication, and wealth.^note Plumes from certain birds can be pricey. There aren't any ceremonial reasons for trying to look/be like a bird, the feathers are being worn just to look glamorous. Whether wearing large plumes, or trimmings of down feathers, it's all fashionable, in both fiction or in Real Life.

Common forms are feathers on hand fans, feather boas, plumes on hats, trimming a rich lady's nightgown, trimming Pimped Out Dresses, trimming Sexy Santa Dresses, and decorating headdresses and showgirl skirts on dancers and showgirls in nightclubs.

Any examples of Peacock Girl, where the feathers are worn instead of a character having a peacock tail, would be examples of this.

Common in Costume Porn.

A Sister Trope to Pretty in Mink (often feathers are worn in a similar way as fur^note such as a stole covered in swansdown would be just as prized as mink stole).

Compare Gold Makes Everything Shiny, Feather Motif.

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Examples:

Advertising

• A 2010 ad for Diet Coke called "Stay Extraordinary" ended with an actress patting down the feather skirt on her designer dress before she got out of the limo and on to the red carpet.

Anime & Manga

• A singer's club dress in Armored Trooper VOTOMS has large feathers spread out in the shoulder like fans.
• Bleach: Before the time-skip, Yumichika accentuated his right eye with two pairs of feathers (multi-hued in the manga, red and yellow respectively in the anime). After the time-skip, he's discarded those feathers for very fluffy feathered earrings and a slight feathering at the ends of his eyelashes on both eyes. His Animal Motif (courtesy of his zanpakutou) is the peacock.
• La Seine No Hoshi: Marie Antoinette, being an Ojou, has a fan that's light blue with a darker ring near the edges.
• Naru's wedding dress in Love Hina had the sleeves trimmed with feathers.
• Donquixote Doflamingo in One Piece wears a feather jacket.
• In Pokémon: The Series, Jessie's If I Were a Rich Man fantasy includes her wearing a feather boa. Another fluffy boa is worn by a Socialite on the St. Anne.
• Raijuta Isurugi from Rurouni Kenshin wears large shoulder pads made of black feathers. In an extra page, the author admits that he regrets giving him those, as they take a long time to draw.
• In the Sailor Moon episode, called "Wedding Bell Blues" in the dub, some of the wedding dresses are trimmed with feathers◊.
• In Saint Seiya, the (male) god Hypnos' armor has stylized peacock feathers and a quasi-Holy Halo. This is Shown Their Work since Hypnos would be depicted as a peacock in paintings.
• Science Ninja Team Gatchaman: A white Feather Bikini, paired with a feather Showgirl Skirt and headdress, is worn by a lady in a carnival-style celebration being described.

• The cover of the second volume of Tenjho Tenge had a lady wearing a white bikini and a feather boa.
• On one of the original Twin Princess of Wonder Planet pages, Altessa is shown wearing a peacock-inspired dress, with the plummage as part of her tiara. You can see it here.
• Wedding Peach: The Frilly Upgrade additions to the battle dresses in the "DX" episodes have feathers on the shoulders that can grow into wings when needed. And Salvia wears a feather boa to a yacht party held by a guy she has a crush on.
• Voltes V: Katherine Rii dons a fluffy pink and purple fan, which fits her Lady and Knight motif with Heinel, who wields a sword.

Comic Books

• Some DC Comics stories set in the 1880s Gotham City have shown Mayor Theodore Cobblepot with a feather in his top hat, and his coat seems to be lined with plumage; a Call-Forward to his descendant's fondness for birds.
• In the comic adaptation of Star Trek: The Next Generation, issue #2 was a Christmas Episode, where the crew had a party on the holodeck, and Dr. Crusher wore a dress with a brown feather boa.
• Wonder Woman Vol 1: As part of his blessing, Ares granted Helen Alexandros (the Silver Swan) feather plumage as part of a prima ballerina costume that grants her flight.

Film - Animated

• The twins in Barbie in A Christmas Carol wear feather headdresses, one pink and one blue.
• The tiaras the Queens wore, such as Kida's mother at the very beginning and Kida herself at the end of Disney's Atlantis: The Lost Empire have large pink and blue feathers coming out of the back.
• Pinocchio, Peter Pan, and Robin Hood all wear red feathers in their hats.
• In My Little Pony: The Movie (1986), Rosedust, the queen of the Flutter Ponies, wears a red feather in her mane.
• The Dinoco girls from Cars are female cars who wear blue feathers on their roofs.
• Aladdin in his Prince Ali attire, the Sultan, and Jafar all wear hats with single feathers on them.
• The antagonistic elephants from Dumbo wear feathered hats.

Film - Live-Action

• After David's pants are torn in Bringing Up Baby, he's forced to wear Susan's feather-trimmed nightgown while staying over.
• In The Carpetbaggers a lady wears skimpy pink feather outfit◊ in a decadent party.
• Jennifer Lopez's white dream dress in The Cell is largely covered with feathers.
• The Busby Berkeley Number "Spin A Little Web Of Dreams" from Fashions of 1934 used plumes everywhere, to use up an overstock the design house ended up ordering.
• Gone with the Wind: Rhett makes Scarlett go to a party in a fancy red dress in is heavily trimmed with plumage.
• The Playboy Bunny outfit Elle was tricked into wearing in Legally Blonde had a feather-trimmed neckline.
• In Love Before Breakfast, Kay wears a costume that has so many feathers on her hat and dress that she might fly away◊.
• Some of the dresses in the Marie Antoinette films are feather-trimmed.
  • In the 1938 version, Marie wears a dress where the skirt almost entirely covered with feathers.
  • In the 2006 version, Marie has a pink feather-trimmed dress and matching muff, while her lady-in-waiting wears a dress, muff, and hat trimmed with white down. They wear it in a scene to show how boring and monotonous the ceremonial life in Versailles was becoming.
• Countess Helene in Monte Carlo wears a feather-trimmed dress and cape; she also carries a large ostrich-feather fan at one point.
• Satine's "Pink Diamonds" dress in Moulin Rouge! has a Showgirl Skirt of pink feathers, which she used to impress the Duke (or who she thought was the Duke).
• The Mummy Returns: Anakh-Su-Namun's reincarnation evidently wanted to look good when her men were attacking the O'Connell home, as she wore a glittered evening dress and a feather boa.
• In Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, Will Turner wears one when he saves Jack Sparrow from his execution at the end of the movie. Amusingly, when the two are cornered at the back of the fort, Jack finds the feather irritatingly getting in his face and blows it away.
• Shanghai Lily in Shanghai Express (1932) wears a prominent black feather costume.
• The brothel owner in Tank Girl wears a black dress with very large feathers on it, arranged like Shoulders of Doom.
• Theodora in Theodora Goes Wild wears many feathered dresses in her "wild" stage.
• Given the setting, the film The Three Musketeers 1956 has a lot of feathered hats. Clothing Damage is frequently emphasized when peoples' hats' feathers get chopped in half.
• Ginger Rogers wore a feathered dress for the "Cheek To Cheek" number in Top Hat. (According to Fred Astaire, the feathers caused problems in filming by flying off everywhere during the dance. Later, when Leslie Caron, during production of Daddy Long Legs, asked if she could design her own costumes for the dances, Astaire agreed but firmly vetoed any feathers — one particularly vexing feather from Rogers' costume kept getting in his face and he hadn't forgotten that.)
• The female lead in Underworld (1927) (1927) isn't called Feathers◊ for nothing. She loves wearing feathery clothes.
• Daphne in Unfaithfully Yours owns a dress with plumes at the hips, that is important both in a fantasy and in reality.
• Brian Slade in Velvet Goldmine wears several enormous pink feather boas, and a peacock-like fanned collar of white egret feathers over the course of the film.
• In Striptease, Erin wears a black feather boa scarf as part of one of her routines. Combined with her diamond earrings and necklace, black Opera Gloves and her hair done in a Prim and Proper Bun, she's apparently going for a "classy and glamourous" theme.

Literature

• In Bride of the Rat God, an actress at a party wears a dress with marabou straps, that slip down her shoulders as she gets drunker.

• One of the bizarre crimes in the Relativity story "Master Blankard's Pawn" is a thief that breaks in to the dressing rooms on a drag show and steals all the feather boas.
• The Sorcerer's Daughter:
  • Princess Odette's desire to have fashionable swan-feather dresses at her court is what leads to her being turned into a swan herself because she orders a slaughter of swans at Swan Lake, and the local wizard doesn't like it at all.
  • Also Odette appears at a royal ball in a magnificent flamingo-feather dress.

Live-Action TV

• The Fluff Girl outfits (a Fictional Counterpart to the Playboy Bunny) in Adam Adamant Lives! are basically one-piece swimsuits trimmed with feathers.
• Billy on Billy the Exterminator used a feather boa as part of an improvised bee suit early in the series; it didn't work out as the bees could crawl through it and ended up stinging Billy several times on his neck.
• Common in ballroom dancing dresses, which means this shows up a lot in Dancing with the Stars.
• In an episode of Leverage, Parker wears an outlandish feathery outfit while disguised as a pop star.
• This decorates many of the outfits worn in the "Parade of States/Nations" parts of the Miss USA, Miss Teen USA, and Miss Universe pageants. Some of the evening dresses also are trimmed with feathers.
  • In the swimsuit competition for the 1991 Miss USA pageant, the contestants wore white feather jackets over their suits.
• In the first episode of Once Upon a Time, Snow White wears a wedding dress with a white feather skirt, when she marries Prince Charming.
• Queca in Pataclaun has a red/pink boa as part of her ensemble piece for the first season.
• Miss Yvonne of Pee-wee's Playhouse wore some outfits with white feather trim, including a Happy Holidays Dress.
• On NCIS: New Orleans, Sonja Percy has a picture of herself in a yellow bridesmaid dress with lots of feathers. Chris LaSalle can't resist ribbing her about it.
  "Big Bird called; he wants his feathers back."
• Parodied in Morecambe and Wise's Synchronized Morning Routine where they use strings of sausages as feather boas with hilarious results.

Magazines

• Oprah Winfrey posed for the March 2014 cover of Essence wearing a white dress with a white feather skirt. One of her followers asked for the dress, and to her surprise, Oprah agreed. That follower said it would be her wedding gown.

Music

• In Barry Manilow's "Copacabana," Lola the showgirl wears "yellow feathers in her hair."
• In the mandarin music video for "Let It Go" from Frozen (2013), one of the costumes is a dress that has a train of white feathers.

Mythology

• Any depiction of Krishna, ever (whether he's two years old and stealing butter or being his usual Bishōnen The Casanova self), ALWAYS has him with a single peacock feather in his headpiece.

Pinball

• Featured in Bally's Mata Hari pinball.

Professional Wrestling

• Many wrestling stars wear feathers, like feather boas, but we dare you to mock them over that.
  • "Superstar" Billy Graham.
  • Hulk Hogan.
  • Jesse Ventura.
  • Larry Sweeney.
  • Ric Flair.
  • Tina Ferrari [Ivory] in GLOW in the 1980s.

Tabletop Games

• The mimir.net fan-expansion of Planescape has the Peacock Lord, a refugee from the Beastlands, who wears a collar of peacock feathers.
• Very abundant in the artwork of Anima: Beyond Fantasy, for example Elisabetta Barbados in the cover of the Gaïa sourcebook as well as Fallen Angels Dinah and there're still more.

Theatre

• The 1992 production of Guys and Dolls had chicken costumes for "A Bushel and a Peck" that involved large feather tails.
• Takarazuka Revue productions are also rife with this. Just look them up on YouTube.
• Tsukiuta's illustrator Jiku and stage costume designer Yoshida Miho both seem to love this:
  • Six Gravity's 2017 idol costumes, which appear in the 2018 stage plays, all feature feathers. Some have them around their arms or legs, some on shoulders, etc.
  • The Halloween Episode 4th stage play, Lunatic Party, has special costumes for all 12 members that are all black with feathers, lace, and glitter, and accents of each members' image colors. Details can be seen in the photo book that was published of the costumes.
  • In the fifth stage play, Rabbits Kingdom, a few characters have large plumes on their masks in the Masquerade Ball scene. The Bird Queen, as her title would imply, also has plenty.
• In a Danish production of Wicked, Glinda's bubble dress has a skirt covered with white feathers.

Toys

• Barbie has some outfits with feathers. This includes the "Angel Princess" doll, which has white feathers covering the shoulders of her dress.

Video Games

• Alita Tiala from Apollo Justice Ace Attorney wears a dress with white feathers on her chest arranged like angel wings, to make her seem sweet and innocent. But like previous seemingly pure and innocent characters, she wasn't, killing that one guy and trying to frame her fiancee.
• Balder from Bayonetta wears not only peacock feathers, but enormous peacock feathers... that come from a dead white peacock he has draped over his shoulder. The feathers later become a part of him when he goes One-Winged Angel (or Twelve Winged Angel, in this case) for his Boss Battle.
  • Then there's Jeanne, who has enormous feather tassels on the ends of her guns for most of the game.
• The showgirl in Bloody Good Time has a train of feathers as part of her outfit.
• A dancer in DanceDanceRevolution (Wii) has a sexy angel dress trimmed with white or black feathers, and a similarly trimmed hand fan.
• Morrigan of Dragon Age: Origins has crow feathers on her ridiculous patchwork outfit, a reference to the Celtic goddess.
  • Anders and Merrill, the mage party members from Dragon Age II, both wear gray feathered pauldrons on their shoulders. This ties into the symbolism of the Feather Motif; as mages, both live in fear of being hunted down and imprisoned for the rest of their lives, and freedom for all mages is Anders's primary motivation. Furthermore, Anders eventually starts wearing black feathers, bringing him closer to the evil/death Creepy Crows motif (Merrill even tells him he looks like a crow), symbolizing his corruption by the demon of Vengeance possessing him and his decision to blow up the Chantry.
• Final Fantasy VIII: When Edea is possessed by Ultimecia, she wears a slinky black dress with a feathered collar.
• The Lamias in Final Fantasy IX wear pink feathers for their headdress and Giant Poofy Sleeves.
• Yuna's wedding dress in Final Fantasy X is trimmed with white feathers at the shoulder and skirt.
• Lightning's new outfit in Final Fantasy XIII-2 is a Showgirl Skirt of white feathers.
  • Chocolina as well. But then, considering who she really is, it may be more a case of Morphic Resonance.
• Gwendolyn's Battle Ballgown in Odin Sphere is made ti look birdlike, with all the blue feathers.
• Aya of Onechanbara wears a feather boa and feather-trimmed bikini as she chops up zombies.
• Rune Factory 4 seems to love this trope. Bachelorette Margaret is the only one of the girls to wear feathers unless you count Ventuswill's feathered dragon tail and wings as a fashion choice. Among the guys, eligible bachelors Doug and Leon both wear feathers on their outfits, and Leon carries his feathered fan everywhere with him (including in the winter, to bed, at the beach when he intends to swim, and around all manner of aggressive monsters). Ineligible bachelor Bado also wears a fluffy...thing...on the back of his neck that may either be feathers or fur.
• Some of the fancy stage outfits in Sakura Wars are trimmed with feathers.
• The empress's dress in Skies of Arcadia includes feathers arranged like wings.
• Ling Xiaoyu's dress in Tekken 5 and 6 is a chomsang trimmed with white feathers at the shoulders.

Web Comics

• In Phantomarine, Lady Halea rocks a giant feather boa.
• Penelope from Zoophobia's design is based around a white peacock, and also wears their feathers in her hair. Or possibly has their feathers for her hair, as it's implied she's an Avian, a shapeshifter that can move between a human form and a bird form.

Web Original

• The Nostalgia Chick has a white feather boa she wore in her Showgirls review and in her fanservice guest spot on That Jewish Guy's "Myths About Hanukkah" video.
• When The Nostalgia Critic reviewed Moulin Rouge!, Lindsay, Elisa, and Nella◊ had a guest spot, cosplaying in corsets and feather boas.
  "Boa fight!"

Western Animation

• A George of the Jungle story told of the Oo-oo Birds, whose tail feathers had the effect of making the women who wore them look gorgeous, resulting in a rash of poachers plucking the hapless birds.

Real Life

• Far outside the realm of mere fashion, many (though not all) Indigenous nations in the Americas incorporate feathers into their traditional garment styles, often in extremely elaborate ways; the long feathered headdress (which is specific to certain nations in Central North America, such as the Cree and Lakota) is only the best-known example. Such garments are often extremely Serious Business: sacred, marks of high honour, and/or priceless heirlooms. Some feathers may only be received as gifts or honours, never bought or sold. Powwow dancers' regalia, which may feature extravagant featherwork along with beadwork, embroidery, and other techniques, is often handmade, extremely costly, and one-of-a-kind. In several nations there are elaborate protocols that must be observed if a feather so much as falls off of a powwow dancer's outfit.
• Feather earrings and hats with feathers on are often in fashion. Same for handbags with feather decoration.
  • These hats were very popular in the early 20th century. It had the effect of decimating entire populations of herons, egrets, and other birds with fancy plumage.
• The Fairytale Wedding Dress worn by Soraya Esfandiary-Bakhtiari, the second wife of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the last Shah of Iran. See it here and here.
• The pink dress that Angie Harmon wore to the 2011 Screen Actors Guild Awards had a feather neckline and feather skirt. Also the designer based it off an earlier wedding dress she made.
• Cee-Lo Green's performance at the 2011 Grammy Awards used rainbow-colored feathers.
• Björk's infamous and oft-parodied swan dress that she wore to the Oscars one year. It wasn't just feathers; she rocked the whole bird.
• Beyoncé wore a show Fairytale Wedding Dress with a feather-trimmed skirt at the 2009 BET awards.
• The extravagant costumes worn by The Mummers during their annual New Year's Day parade in Philadelphia. Each individual costume has dozens of ostrich feathers, each of which can cost as much as $5. And since some of the clubs have several dozen performers marching down Broad St. in a performance...
• There is a peacock-themed Fairy Tale Wedding Dress with a skirt covered with peacock feathers. It was made by Vera Wang and set a record for the world's most expensive wedding dress (at 1.5 million USD).^note Of course now it's just one of the most expensive.
• While not nearly as elaborate as the above example, Margaret Cho took inspiration from Björk's infamous swan dress and wore a dress covered with peacock feathers to the Grammys when she was up for Best Comedy Album. She recounts in Assassin that she didn't win the Grammy, but she was named Worst Dressed. This was met with cheers from the audience, since it came after a rant on how everyone at awards ceremonies dresses the same and that those named Worst Dressed are actually the best since they're creating their own look.
• Brian Eno wore these with Roxy Music and in his early solo career.
• Brazilian Carnival dancers often wear massive, exuberant feathers in their costumes, usually in headdresses or attached to their backs. Although they typically come from geese, peacocks, pheasants and other birds, the practice is slowly losing way to synthetic feathers to avoid animal cruelty.

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