A nutria fashion show will be held in Brooklyn this weekend, part of an ongoing effort to rebrand the pest as an environmentally friendly and socially acceptable fur, reports The New York Times. Nutria-palooza is being sponsored by the Barataria-Terrebonne Estuary Foundation, a nonprofit conservation group in Thibodaux that is working to keep the rodents from eating away the plants that hold coastal wetlands together. Cree McCree, an environmentalist and designer from New Orleans, says she got the idea to use nutria pelts in her collection after efforts to control the population left carcasses rotting in the swamp. “If they’re being killed anyway,” she told The Times, “then why not make something beautiful out of them?” The efforts are catching on: Designers such as Clinton native Billy Reid, Michael Kors and Oscar de la Renta have used nutria trim or linings in recent collection. Read the full story here.
Nutria pelts featured on New York fashion runway
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