Now That's What I Call Fierce: Taxidermy Chic, Part II

It's Monday and I'm feeling a bit delicate and had no intention of going in this direction, but having discovered this stuff purely by haphazard Googling, I feel attention must be drawn. These vintage accessories are of such authentically terrifying disposition that they make all the chains, studs and padlock malarkey issued by today's fashion houses look flat-out poser in compare.

OK, this is your only warning. These items are like WHOA. And the Victorian women who carried them must have been pretty intimidating too, despite their vapourous reputation.

Exhibit A: a purse made out of a swan's foot (click on image to enlarge, if you can't help yourself). Apparently trumpeter swans were hunted to near extinction to make objects like these. Why is anybody's guess, because I can't imagined it looked much nicer fresh than it does in its current state of antiquity.



Exhibit B: While it's not actually taxidermy -- the brooch is made of celluloid -- some lady somewhere saw fit to wear a fly on her bodice. On purpose. Exhibit C: An armadillo bag, vintage '30s or '40s. With [bejewelled] heady and footies still on. It's a nice shape, beautifully cured and crafted, but no amount of workmanship will ever change the fact that it's a flipping armadillo.


Exhibit D: Yes, nothing says refinement like a little alligator's foot
purse. This thing looks straight out of Hogwart's, but it was carried for real.



That's it for now. I'm off to look at stuff from the Gap, and nothing but, for the rest of the day.