© Jerimiah B. Brown

Dressed in Peace

Dead rooster lives on--at the DIA.

by Esther Hurwitz

posted 10/15/2009

When a pet dies, most people hold a brief service and bury it in the backyard. But when local haute couture designer Rebecca Lambers had to put down her rooster, Taver Ishima, she turned him into high fashion.

Taver had attacked a hen, leaving a two-inch rip in her head. Though the hen--since renamed Tina Turner--demonstrated her resilience by laying an egg the next day, Lambers decided Taver had to go. But having grown up on an austere Nigerian farm where her missionary father raised chickens, she couldn't see letting his beautiful feathers go to waste--so she incorporated them into a one-of-a-kind jacket. Called "Oiseau" ("bird" in French), it will be displayed at the Detroit Institute of Arts October 18 through January 17, in conjunction with an exhibit of Richard Avedon's fashion photographs.   

[Originally published in October, 2009.]