Sports and fashion often impact each other, with trends in one rubbing off on the other. Watch any basketball game today, compared with an NBA game from the 1970s, and you can see how the length of the shorts have changed over time, getting longer as short shorts grew out of style. Same can be said of tennis, through which tennis stars Rafael Nadal made men’s Capri pants hot and sisters Venus and Serena Williams redefined the classic white tennis skirt with risqué catsuits, corset dresses, and bright colors.
But who would have ever thought that of all the sports, it would be fly-fishing that would fall victim to the fashion industry?
We’re not talking about fly fisherman suddenly sporting neon waders or off-the-shoulder vests. Rather, the fashion world has taken its cue from fly-fishing, incorporating the same feathers normally used in tying flies into hair extensions, jewelry, and clothes. The fad has become so popular in the past year that it is negatively affecting fly-fishing, driving up the price of feathers and emptying the shelves of even the biggest stores’ fly-fishing departments. While the trend may have peaked, and some fly tiers are even taking advantage of the fad by making earrings, the beauty world’s foray into the sport of fly-fishing looks to have lasting impacts.
Flying off the shelves
Fly-fishing shops started noticing the trend about a year ago. That’s when more and more women started coming in to buy feathers. Andy Burk, who owns the West River Fly Shop in Truckee, said that in the last six months sales of his feathers have been split evenly between fly fisherman and hair stylists or jewelry makers. For the past year, Mountain Hardware has been out of the feathers, except for the colors unpopular for hair extensions — gray and brown.
‘We can no longer even acquire feathers anymore,’ said Steve Soulam, a 30-year fly fisherman who works in Mountain Hardware’s sporting goods department, ‘to the point that every week I write an order and we just don’t get any merchandise.’
Even big chain stores like Cabela’s and Scheels Sporting Goods haven’t been able to keep the fly-fishing feathers in stock. The shelves at Cabela’s fly shop in Reno have been bare for four months.
‘We can’t find them anywhere, not even online,’ said Bob Sappenfield, the lead in the retail store’s fly shop.
Sappenfield said he used to be able to get the feathers from other Cabela’s stores around the country, but as the fad, which started on the West Coast, has spread eastward, all 30 of Cabela’s U.S. locations are out. Soulam has gotten calls from as far away as Texas from fly fisherman trying to track down the feathers.
Not enough birds of a feather
The feathers come from genetically engineered chickens that are bred specifically to grow extremely long feathers — known as hackles — for the fly-fishing industry. The plumes, which are dyed a variety of colors, are used in flies to help imitate the insects that fish eat. The feathers are sold on the skin (called a pelt) by either the saddle (back of the chicken) or cape (neck) that can have up to 300 feathers on it, or in smaller packages of six to 12 feathers. A saddle would normally last a fly fisherman decades, but hairdressers can go through multiple saddles in one weekend. A typical hair extension uses five hackles in various colors.
That’s the crux of the problem. Only a handful of farms produce the specialized chickens, which are grown in cold climates and can only be harvested one time a year, in February. With the extra demand coming from the fashion world, the farms have not been able to keep up. Cabela’s Sappenfield recently got a letter from the company’s grower, Whiting Farm out of Colorado, that it will be almost two years before they are caught up with their orders.
The scarcity has been driving up the price of hackles. Burk said that a saddle, which used to sell for $35 to $125 before the fashion craze started, is now going for up to $1,000 on eBay. Similarly, Tim Haddon, a professional fly fisherman and guide based in Tahoe City, said that packs of feather that once cost $10 to $15 are selling for $200 to $300.
‘The thing that is making the average tier nervous is that they know that prices are going up,’ Burk said. ‘We’ve never really been hit with [a price increase] at this level before.’
This has created some disgruntled fly fishermen.
‘Some of my customers say, ‘I wish they’d go away so we can have our feathers back,’’ Soulam said. ‘It’s an unfortunate fashion fad that impacted a lot of people. It came out of left field. I hope that in another season or two it won’t be as popular.’
Getting the shaft?
But not everyone in the fly-fishing world is upset about the trend. Burk is capitalizing on the fad by making his own feather earrings, with a price tag of $20 to $100. He sells out of them as fast as he can make them. Burk also sees another plus side to the hackle-as-fashion fad.
‘Fly-fishing and fly tiers haven’t gotten this much press ever, not since ‘A River Runs Through It’ came out,’ said Burk, referring to the 1992 film. ‘It’s something that could turn positive for the sport.’
There are signs that the hair feather fad, which exploded after Aerosmith frontman Steven Tyler sported the plumes in his debut as an ‘American Idol’ judge this winter, is fading. Boutiques and hair salons have started noticing that the trend has petered out among teenagers and young women as it has reached the masses.
‘The hair feathers are going away now; I have 5-year-olds asking for them,’ said Kait Mally, owner of Dressed in Truckee. ‘The hair extensions have peaked, but I think the earrings will always be popular.’
Similarly, Jennifer Oxandaboure, owner of Salon Bella Vita in Tahoe City, was selling 10 hair extensions a day at her accessory store at the height of the fad, but says the trend is declining in popularity.
‘It was a craze for a while, but it’s kind of slowed down,’ she said. ‘Although a lot of younger kids still want them.’
But some fly fishermen think the damage is done, and that it might take years for the fly-fishing business to recover, if ever.
‘The [hackle] companies have shifted their emphasis to the fashion industry because they can make so much more money,’ Soulam said. ‘In the long-term … pricing won’t come down, they will keep it that way.’
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