VERY HAUTE COUTURE!

In 1827, Ottoman ruler Muhammad Ali of Egypt sent giraffes to the monarchs Francis I of Austria, Charles X of France and our own George IV as diplomatic gifts. On the voyage across the Mediterranean to Marseille, King Charles’s giraffe Zarafa (who was later stuffed, right) travelled in the hold with a hole cut in the deck for her to poke her head through. Her arrival at the king’s chateau, after a 550-mile procession through an amazed France, complete with an antelope and a police escort, spawned a fashion craze – women wore their hair in towering topknots (above) to simulate her horns.