Please enjoy this episode from the Dressed Archive.

We will be back with season 8 and all new dress content in February 2025.

Dress the History of Fashion is a production of dressed media.

Music With over seven billion people in the world, we all have one thing in common.

Every day, we all get dressed. Welcome to Dressed, the history of

fashion, a podcast where we explore the who, what, when of why we wear. We're fashion historians,

and your host, April Callahan, and Cassidy Zachary. So it has been 17 years, but people are still

talking about one very memorable Oscar dress.

Bjork caused quite the stir when she walked down the Oscar red carpet in the swan dress

created by Macedonian designer Mar Jan Pajoski. It's worse saying that this was not an actual

swan, but it was rather made to look like one. A feathered skirt comprised the body, while a long

neck draped around Bjork's own, the head resting on her chest. And in an atmosphere that often

takes itself very seriously, I actually found Bjork's choice of ensemble as refreshing as it was amusing.

I mean, she did actually lay eggs on the red carpet. I'm all for this.

Bjork herself confirmed that the dress was meant to poke fun at the Hollywood establishment.

And while numerous parodies over the years have commemorated Bjork's statement making

Swan Ensemble, historically the use of birds and women's dress has been no laughing matter.

It hasn't. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, feathers were only one of any number

of trimmings meant to accessorize women's headwear for both day and evening. But unlike ribbons

and artificial flowers, feathers used for adornment came at a deadly cost.

From the 1870s to the 1920s, millions of women embraced the fashion for ornamental plumage, and millions of birds died as a result.

Beginning in the second half of the 19th century, a multi-million dollar global industry thrived on the almost entirely

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