Edwardian ladies' hat fashions : 'where did you get that hat?' : an illustrated history of Edwardian ladies' hats and the feather industry of the period / Peter Kimpton.

Includes bibliographical references.

Enter the new boy -- The Edwardian craze -- Postcards by the million -- The merry widow -- Goodby 'Bertie' -- Lucky old Edwin -- The Eminence Noir' -- Sleepers -- Rose tinted spectacles -- Escape to the seaside -- Edward Linley Sambourne -- Hatpins -- The sting of a hornet -- Who's a pretty boy then? -- Feather farms and breeders -- Ostrich feather palaces -- Parisian humour -- Saving the birds -- Absolute butchery -- Plumassiers -- The feather king -- Monsieur Methot -- Canada's 'greatest store' -- Maison Lemarié -- The amazing Coco Chanel -- Paranoia? -- Lost in time -- Down with the Hun! -- Keeping the presses rolling -- Gilding the lily -- From the trenches -- Hope for the birds!

"Based upon the author's large personal collection of beautiful fashion postcards from Edwardian times, this book takes the reader on a journey through that era -- covering the hat fashions and social changes of the day. Delve further into the carnage that took place around the world, in which unscrupulous and money grabbing individuals from the Northumbrian coast in England to the Everglades in America, would callously slaughter whole colonies of birds (leaving their young to die) purely to provide the millinery trade with ornate feathers to decorate fashionable hats during that era. The book also takes the reader into the world of millinery sweatshops of poverty stricken New York and describes the conditions and deprivations under which the poorly paid workers, many of them immigrants, worked. You can even learn about the background, history and amazing life of one of the world's greatest fashion designers, Coco Chanel, as she set out on her lifetime of fashion in Edwardian Paris"--