Yeah, I don't like this translation. I like the other one, to be honest. Shame the other scanlators didn't keep going forward like they said they would. But, eh... I guess I'm stuck with these until the return of the Tonikaku sl team's work in the next volume or whatever. Only plusses for this one are those informative notes, but I just looked up Cugnot on my own, anyway. And the Model-T comment was obvious on the next page.
And yeah, definitely feathers. Though your image broke in the past two years, for whatever reason. At least when I tried quoting your post, I could at least see the alt text for the image that explained it was the first page's splash art. Just how a number of older-style women's hats would be decorated, to be honest. The one in the actual chapter's flashback sequence seemed a bit more what folks would expect from feather-decorated hats, though.