Ocelot fur hat.

Diameter 130mm.

Fur was worn for thousands of years for warmth. Certain furs were more expensive than others, usually because of their softness or colour, but it became fashionable to have exotic furs from the 1600s when beavers were hunted in North America.

From the late 1700s, feathers were used in millinery, and women’s hats were often blamed for the decline and demise of several bird species. After the mid-1800s, fur for fashion’s sake was wildly popular. Furs became part of the design, rather than reserved for winter linings or accessories. And it didn’t stop at fur, whole taxidermy animals, like birds, were used on hats and garments. Animal parts like beetle carapace, feathers, predator claws were paired with plants to create strange confectionaries to be worn. During the 1880s, several conservationists and naturalists, most of them women, banded together to protest the use of animals in clothing.

Ocelots are a medium-sized cat species native to South and Central America. They resemble leopards. Their conservation status is Least Concern, though their numbers are declining in the wild. Ocelot fur was a common fur used in fashion. They were also popular pets in the mid-1900s. Salvador Dali famously had a pet Ocelot which he travelled with.