no feathers, no leathers :::

With just one more studio day remaining to complete my album ready for mastering it’s time to turn my attention to visuals. There’s a lot to be done: photos, website, video content…all, for me, just as exciting and important as the music – more ways to tell stories.

I spent yesterday afternoon around Brick Lane visiting Spitalfields Market, the Sunday Upmarket and the Vintage Market upstairs at the Truman Brewery searching for key props and accessories to tell mini stories in my forthcoming photo sessions with Laura Ward. It was a fruitful and fun mission, helped massively by visiting Sydney dwelling friends Tim and Belle who listened to my wacky ideas as if they were perfectly reasonable. Friends, I love you for that ability!

A visit to Headmistress‘ gorgeous stall at the Upmarket led to a bit of soul searching and an interesting discussion on Twitter regarding the ethics of wearing feathers. Though I’m no longer vegan I’m still a strict vegetarian – no parmesan, no Bloody Marys (unless you take out the anchovy-filled Worcestershire sauce), no gelatine and certainly no leather or suede about my person – and though conversations about food choices happen all the time I’ve never discussed the wearing of feathers with a fellow veggie. I’d seen one of the beautiful Headmistress headbands on a girl in a club and really wanted one for the album photos, so went along to ask questions about where they came from. Big thanks to the girl on the stall for being totally honest about the fact that the feathers come from guineafowl and other birds that are raised for meat. So, they’re not killed for their feathers alone but the feathers are a byproduct of the birds’ death – they’re not collected while they’re alive. So, no headband for me!

As I walked away I threw the question out to my Twitter buddies: “Vegetarian ethics question: is wearing a headband decorated with feathers akin to wearing leather?” The majority of people said it depended on how the feathers were obtained – if the bird was still alive when the headband was made then no harm, but the likelihood of that scenario was going to be pretty slim. If I ate bird hopefully I’d have no qualms in making use of a byproduct of that food choice by wearing feathers – if the animal’s dead anyway then better not to waste anything – but we all draw our own lines in the sand and this is mine. Thankfully for the photos’ sake I found a Japanese couple in another part of the markets selling headbands with big glittery motifs on them and got one of those instead.

So, yesterday’s haul consisted of a glittery headband and green wool military cloak (both pictured), some vintage spectacles and a massive fake fur hat. Add some fluttery dresses, my new superhero boots and lots of face paint and I have some fun dressing up box moments ahead.

Posted by warriorgrrl