Hooked on feathers

When the rocker turned reality TV judge Steven Tyler strolled on to the American Idol set last week flashing slender feather hair extensions, the music star unknowingly irked that usually most Zen of sportsmen: the fly fisherman.

The accessories dangling from Tyler’s artfully dishevelled mane weren’t just any feathers plucked from any bird but a premium type of plumage known as Euro saddle hackle, which comes from a special kind of chicken. Long, soft and supple (not to mention shampoo-friendly) the hackle is harvested from roosters that breeders have genetically manipulated for decades solely to produce feathers as fine as these, ideally suited for making fishing lures.

“I heard that a rock musician was wearing one of our feathers on American Idol and I thought, ‘Oh man, now everyone and their daughter is going to get one’,” says Tom Whiting of Colorado-based Whiting Farms, a major producer of fishing saddle hackle in the US and the source of Tyler’s accessory. “The fly-fishing community is beating me up royally over this.” For, as it turned out, Tyler was not alone. Like the singers Miley Cyrus and Ke$ha and Jennifer Love Hewitt the actress, he is simply following a current west American trend which has seen hairdressers plundering fly-fishing shops, fiercely guarding their suppliers’ identities, and suddenly taking interest in fishing tackle.

“I have never in 10 years of marriage looked in his box,” says Andrea Benedetto of La Pine, Oregon, who “raided” her husband Rick’s fly-fishing stash to find materials for an extensions business she launched with friend Cindy Beckwith last February. “He flipped out, saying the feathers came from specially bred birds and I was like, ‘Yeah, right!’ But then I found out it’s true.”

Thieving wives are just the most tangible of the fishermen’s woes. As demand has soared, supply has dwindled, and saddle hackle that cost a fisherman $30 just a few months ago now sells for $60 or more. That’s a pittance compared with the $350 a saddle recently fetched on eBay, and nothing compared with the $1,500 an entrepreneur paid to have some samples shipped to Europe.

Customers, from children to seniors, are flocking to salons to pay as little as $12 in Oregon or as much as $45 in Los Angeles for a wisp of clipped, dyed feather in their hair (or goatee, as Beckwith once saw). Prices are going up daily, and stylists say that can turn a $60 saddle into $600 worth of business even in sleepy communities, where fishermen far outnumber fashionistas.

“A lot of people are making a lot of money on this,” Beckwith says.

The feather trend is starting to take wing in Europe, too. Irena Brown launched a feather business called LA Kameleon based in Denmark using imported hackle, which she recently presented at a hair show in Sweden. “We were mobbed,” she says. “For two days we had people lining up, patiently waiting to get a feather installed in their hair. It was absolutely insane. Our entire inventory was ransacked.”

No one is sure where it all began. A stylist in Colorado claims she started it. Others in Oregon and California say they did. But the origins of the feather phenomenon are less compelling than the earthy, 1970s chords the feathers have struck among customers from coast to coast, not to mention Scandinavia, Germany, France and the UK.

Grizzly hackle (a feather with a grey-chevron pattern) dyed turquoise is so popular now it’s nearly impossible to find.

“I think they have a chic bohemian style and feel,” says Lamar Derenzy, a fan of feathers who accessorises her long black hair with an extension to replace large earrings. “It makes this stay-at-home mom feel like a hippie and takes me back to my college carefree days.”

How long those days will last is anyone’s guess. Whiting, who says he controls about 70 per cent of the hackle market, has just 65,000 roosters at any given point, far too few for the fashion industry’s immense purchasing power. “You can’t simply up production overnight on something like this,” Whiting says.

That in turn prolongs the ripples that fishermen are feeling. “It’s definitely going to affect prices next year,” says Mike Bushly, manager of the Trout Shop in Craig, Montana.

In the meantime, a former fly-tyer in Bend, Oregon, couldn’t be happier with the turn of events. With dyes imported from England, a massive stash of fly-fishing materials and the skills to work with them both, Dusty Harris says he can earn in 30 minutes making extensions and earrings what would take him ten hours to do tying lures.

“For me the fly-tying industry is dead,” says Harris, though he also acknowledges the transition has been emotionally complicated. “How do you go from tying flies to hair and earrings?” he asks.

“I don’t know. I just pretend what I’m making are flies without a hook.”

www.featheremporium.com

www.lakameleon.com

www.cindyshaircutsnaturesgifts.com

www.whitingfarms.com