DECEMBER 2007:
Lamplight Feather, Inc. is moving to a new location. No interruption of service is anticipated.
Thank you for your business and loyalty. Our business has expanded to the point where we needed a larger facility. We have purchased an historic building in downtown Fort Jones that doubles our warehouse capacity. We will be moving our sales office, packing and receiving departments, dyeing facility, and warehouse to:
11903 Main Street
Fort Jones CA 96032.
The move will be completed this week and we should be up and running at the new facility by Friday, December 21 and before the Christmas holiday. Please note that we will be closed Monday and Tuesday of Christmas week (Dec 24-25) but open and running at 8:00 AM December 26. Our telephone numbers and our mailing address (PO Box 867) remain the same. Our corporate offices will remain at 130 Carlock Street and will have a new phone number (not yet installed).
JULY 2007:
Lamplight Feather set up a booth display at the Oregon Country Fair near Veneta Oregon. 2007 marks our 35th consecutive year at the same booth location at the Fair. Tony, Donna, Ronda and daughters Cedra and Cait manned the booth for the three days July 13-15. Sales of both feathers and feather earrings were at an all time record. We also had some costume head pieces and hair clips, a line that we intend to expand. It was a lot of work and a lot of fun and plans are already afoot for an even bigger and better booth display next year.
JUNE 2007:
Lamplight Feather has added a new product which we hope our customers will enjoy. These are feather flowers (feather roses) which you can view by going to our catalog page. We are very impressed by the quality of this new item.
MAY 2007:
Tony and Donna attended the Luau Celebration at the Atlantis Casino. Tickets and lodging were complimentary for Lamplight. The evening presented a variety of traditional Hawaiian, Polynesian, and Tahitian music and dance. We also invited daughter Cait as our guest.
APRIL 2007:
Lamplight Fly and Feather is now LAMPLIGHT FEATHER, INC. It is still the same business entity with the same ownership as when we began in April 1973 but has been reorganized as a "S Corporation".
MARCH 2007:
Donna and Tony flew to Aruba on a combined business and pleasure trip. We were able to meet with many of our regular Aruba Carnival costume designers and made some new contacts with several of the dance reviews that perform around the island including the Aruba National Dance Troupe.
A lovely and wonderful island with friendly people, much to see and do, and a great carnival tradition.
AUGUST 2006 UPDATE:
As of September 1, 2006 Lamplight Feather will be welcoming to our staff Ronda McEwen. Ronda is an accomplished artist who will be helping with sales, shipping, and inventory management. Ronda's talent in arts and crafts and design expertise will be much appreciated by our customers with those special projects.
For those who haven't heard as yet, Donna Hill suffered a heart attack earlier this year. She has recovered quite nicely and is in good health but the incident has led her to step down from many of her full-time duties with Lamplight. She remains a part time member of the staff as a design consultant and for occasional vacation fill-in office staffing.
ARTICLE FROM OAKLAND TRIBUNE QUOTES DONNA HILL AND TALKS ABOUT LAMPLIGHT FEATHER AND FEATHERS IN CLOTHING DESIGN.
Novato clothes designer has feather fever
By Monique Beeler, Oakland Tribune
Four months before Nicole Kidman arrived at the Golden Globe Awards wearing an evening gown crowned with a peacock feather at the shoulder, Marin designer Lily Samii had designed her own ball gown trimmed with the showy bird's plumage.
"I did a gown for an opening for the ballet for Karen Caldwell; she's a beautiful socialite," says Samii, speaking from her San Francisco salon where she designs couture fashions using fine materials from silk crepe to crystal beading. "The gown was very deep green taffeta, and we had peacock feathers in the back and at the bustline. It was gorgeous she got so many compliments."
But the designer and her client were horrified when the Jan. 26 debut of Samii's peacock-inspired gown was upstaged 10 days earlier by Kidman's Golden Globe appearance.
"(Caldwell) called me and screamed, 'Did you see that? Did you see that?" Samii says. Designer and client shared a reluctant laugh over the irony of seeing the movie star in a gown so similar to Samii's creation.
In fashion, timing is everything. And 2005 appears destined to be the year of the peacock.
Expect the peacock's fancy feathers, image and color palette to show up in spring fashions and in jewelry and home decor. Prada, for instance, has introduced a playful short skirt featuring peacock feathers, upscale design company de Gournay is offering a peacock motif wallcovering and Cost Plus World Market is selling a wine bar and CD cabinet, each with an iron door etched with a floral peacock pattern.
"Yes, it's really become the in thing," says Donna Hill of Lamplight Feathers in Fort Jones, 100 miles north of Redding. "We were in InStyle magazine this month, page 353. They did a Mardi Gras arrangement with peacock feathers. Feathers in general are just going crazy."
Lamplight Feathers sells decorative plumes, including peacock, ostrich and pheasant, to Hollywood costumers, New York fashion designers, advertisers, home decorators and dance troupes worldwide.
"It's something new and different," says Hill, who co-owns the business with her husband Tony. "It's more glamorous ... Peacock feathers pick up so many colors, burgundy, green, gold, purple."
Designers aren't limiting themselves only to the colorful heart of the peacock feather, Donna Hill says. Several couture designers have plucked the delicate fronds of hair protruding from the quill, then bleached or dyed them before attaching them to a cloth border.
"People are using it on cuffs and necklines and hems to give a floating feeling, a real light feeling," she says. "They're using it on wedding dresses."
Tony Hill started the company as a source for hand-tied fishing flies. He added feather sales as an afterthought. Today, Lamplight Feathers sell an estimated 5,000 peacock feathers each month; a dozen cost $7.50. Tony Hill hasn't tied a fly in three years, his wife says.
She notes that peacocks naturally shed their feathers at the end of the mating season, so there's no need for plucking.
Donna Hill attributes the rising star of peacock feathers to a general shift in fashion attitudes.
"For a while everything was tomboy and unisex," she says. "Now, I think it's trending back toward the more feminine."
Image consultant and stylist Shea English, whose client list includes San Francisco Fashion Week and Levi Strauss & Co., says she likes the peacock feather look, especially as an accessory.
"People could embrace it like the brooch last year -- that was wonderful," English says. "(Peacock feathers) are going to be more for an eccentric person, someone willing to take a risk."
A recent tour of the Hillsdale Shopping Center in San Mateo revealed not a single peacock feather-festooned garment in stores, but peacock-worthy blues and greens appeared everywhere in silky fabrics made into baby doll-style tops, camisoles and flirty sundresses.
Mall employee Shauna Adams, 25, of San Francisco is not disappointed by the absence of peacock-feathered frocks in store windows.
"It's pretty to look at, not necessarily to wear," Adams says. "(But) I love the colors, because they're bright and vibrant."
Loubna Qutami, 19, of Millbrae, and her shopping buddy Alex Gonzalez, 18, of San Mateo say they welcome the classic beauty that peacock feathers and peacock themes lend to fashion. They like things that are different.
"It would be cute as long as it wasn't too much," Qutami says.
Images of the exotic bird on fabric work for her, but the thought of feathered jewelry such as earrings doesn't fly.
"I like the peacock print (concept), but I don't really like the feathers," Qutami says. "The swirl of blues and greens, that's hot. (I'm) not so crazy about the feather in the ear. That would just look weird."
Gonzalez is more open to wearing the real thing. It reminds her of her favorite fashion era and would complement her retro style, she says.
"I'm totally into the 1920s look, the hair, red lips, white skin, black eyeliner," Gonzalez says. "It's feminine and it's sexy."
While peacock themes may be missing from mainstream retail stores at the moment, Samii predicts it won't be long before they show up. In fact, she says, she expects the trend to be "huge, huge, huge."
"Sometimes I have a gut feeling about (trends)," Samii says. "I've seen (peacock themes) in some jewelry design, and I'm sure it's going to take off in the mass market little by little."
Samii says fashion trends generally travel from the level of couture or high design, then to the bridge market and finally to the junior market, also known as the mass market.
Years ago, she says, it took two seasons for the latest runway fashions to make it into the neighborhood boutique. Given today's technology, however, a design can hit the mass market virtually overnight. Within days of the Golden Globes broadcast, designer Allen B. Schwartz announced he'd be producing a $250 knock-off of Kidman's approximately $20,000 gown for his A.B.S. Label.
Fashion reflects what's happening in the broader culture and economy, Samii observes. She suspects the peacock's ascendance has been brought on by everyone's -- from the haves to have-nots' -- craving for symbols of affluence and elegance.
"The ones who have (money) really go all the way for luxury goods," Samii says. "They want to see something different. They want to see luxury in their handbags, shoes, jewelry, clothes."
The have-nots see these items depicted in magazines and movies and demand replicas, which soon fill the marketplace.
Peacock feathers long have been associated with the good life.
From 1870 to 1900, the peacock was a symbol of the Aesthetic movement's reputation for decadence. It was a period that emphasized pleasure in beautiful things and art for art's sake. Liberty of London, an upscale purveyor of clothing, furniture and home fashions, opened its doors during this era and was well known for its peacock pattern fabric, says Inez Brooks-Myers, curator of costume and textiles for the Oakland Museum of California.
"It was a fabulous fabric," Brooks-Myers says. "We have a tea dress in our collection that was made out of the peacock fabric. I can understand why it has evolved and returned."
The feathers' gemstone colors -- muddy green-brown and iridescent blue, green and turquoise -- contrasted with its bold, mysterious black eye give them an indisputable beauty that transcends time and culture, she says.
"The birds themselves have a very regal bearing," Brooks-Myers says. "Perhaps it's just a human quality that wants to emulate that regal bearing that appears in the bird."
Contact Lamplight Feather at 800-806-5149 or visit www.tonyhill.net.
SIDER: A peacock primer
Once a coveted gift given by Indian rajas to foreign rulers, the peacock today is a ubiquitous creature populating nearly every zoo.
While commonly called peacocks, the term technically applies only to the fantastically-colored male. The dull gray-green female is known as a peahen. Both males and females, which are indigenous to India and Sri Lanka, are called peafowl, says Peter Shannon, associate curator for the San Francisco Zoo.
On the zoo's Web site, there is no listing for peafowl in the collection. That's because the low-maintenance birds mostly fend for themselves and don't live in a special exhibition area as do other animals.
Staff members feed the zoo's population of about 50 birds a diet heavy on grain. Otherwise the birds graze on their own, and find their own treetop roosting spot each night. Peafowl instinctively know where the zoo's boundary lines - their personal safety zone - end, and don't venture beyond them, Shannon says. Peafowl live approximately 15 years.
The unremarkable color of the female allows her to blend in to her environment during nesting, while the male's plentiful plumage allows him to show off and compete for a mate.
At the end of each mating season, the male drops his quills leaving his backside a little bare.
- Monique Beeler