Feather cloaks have been used by several cultures. It constituted noble and royal attire in § Hawaii and other Polynesian regions. It is a mythical bird-skin object that imparts power of flight upon the Gods in § Germanic mythology and legend, including the § Swan maidens account. In medieval Ireland, the chief poet (filí or ollam) was entitled to wear a feather cloak.

The feather robe or cloak (Chinese: yuyi; Japanese: hagoromo; 羽衣) was considered the clothing of the Immortals (xian; 仙/僊), and features in swan maiden tale types where a tennyo (Japanese: 天女 "heavenly woman") robbed of her clothing or "feather robe" and becomes bound to live on mortal earth. However, the so-called "feather robe" of the Chinese and Japanese celestial woman came to be regarded as silk clothing or scarves around the shoulder in subsequent literature and iconography.

Elaborate feather cloaks called ʻahu ʻula were created by early Hawaiians, and usually reserved for the use of high chiefs and aliʻi (royalty).

The scarlet honeycreeper ʻiʻiwi (Vestiaria coccinea) was the main source of red feathers. Yellow feathers were collected in small amounts each time from the mostly black ʻōʻō (Moho spp.) or the mamo (Drepanis pacifica).

Another strictly regal item was the kāhili, a symbolic "staff of state" or standard, consisting of pole with plumage attached to the top of it. Princess Nāhiʻenaʻena in her portrait (cf. fig. right) is depicted holding a kāhili while wearing a feather cloak. She would typically wear a feather cloak with a feather coronet and she would match these with a pair of pāʻū ('skirts') which ordinarily would be barkcloth skirt, however, she also had a magnificent yellow feather skirt made for her, which featured in her funerary services.

Other famous examples include:

A mythical enemy-incinerating kapa (barkcloth) cape, retold as a feather skirt in one telling, occurs in Hawaiian mythology. In the tradition regarding the hero ʻAukelenuiaʻīkū, the hero's grandmother Moʻoinanea who is matriarch of the divine lizards (moʻo akua, or simply moʻo) gives him her severed tail, which transforms into a cape (or kapa lehu, i.e. tapa) that turns enemies into ashes, and sends him off on a quest to woo his destined wife, Nāmaka. Nāmaka (who is predicted to attack him when he visits) will be immune to the cape's powers. She is also a granddaughter or descendant of the lizard, and has been given the lizard's battle pāʻū (skirt) and kāhili (feathered staff), also conferred with power to destroy enemy into ashes. In one retelling, Moʻoinanea (Ka-moʻo-inanea) gives her grandson ʻAukele her "feather skirt" and kāhili which "by shaking.. can reduce his enemies to ashes".

A commentator has argued that the feather garment of Nāhiʻenaʻena was regarded as imbued with the apotropaic "powers of a woman's genitals", reminiscent of the mythic pāʻū which Hiʻiaka was given by Pele.