Outsiders unaccustomed to the celebratory antics of New Orleans, a
 city with a venerated history of macabre pageantry, might have 
overlooked subtle and thought provoking elements of the  fashion show
cased at the Multispecies Salon by a designer named Calamity
 (pictured above).

Some of the garb on display included fur from the 
pelts of nutria, a large amphibious rodent originally from South
 America.  Nutria were once farmed for their fur.  This species was 
imported to the United States in the 19th century to support trends in
 high fashion. As fur became less fashionable wild nutria populations
 exploded in North America. “We used to have a big nutria trapping 
industry,” said Elizabeth Shannon, a licensed gator hunter and 
eco-artist who exhibited her work in the Salon.  “But, the price of
 nutria went down to about a dollar a hide.  So my friends basically 
stopped trapping.”

Lately, this prolific species has been damaging 
human infrastructures.  Jefferson Parish, the district that includes 
most suburbs of New Orleans, largely lies below sea level and is kept 
dry by an elaborate series of dykes and canals.  “Nutria have
 seriously weakened the canal banks by overgrazing and building a
labyrinth of tunnels under the surface,” in the words of Marnie
 Winter, Director of Environmental Affairs for Jefferson Parish.  “The 
burrows are interconnected in a sort of honeycomb pattern so that some 
extend under the surface as much as 50-150 feet.  Occasionally severe tunneling in a small area will cause a section of canal bank to 
collapse into the canal… Patches of grass that hold the canal banks in 
place have been grazed down to the bare ground by these voracious
 critters.”

 

Working in concert with the Righteous Fur collective, a
 group making a debut on the New York City fashion scene the same week
 as the Multispecies Salon opening in New Orleans, Calamity was 
refashioning nutria as an ethical alternative to other furs.  Calamity 
was reinvesting nutria with use-value, drawing this nomadic species 
into micro-biopolitical networks of matter and meaning.  Generating a 
new market for nutria pelts, creating economic incentives for trappers
 to remove animals from Louisiana bayous, he scripted this species into
 what Donna Haraway might regard as story of lively capital, where
 commerce and consciousness, ethics and aesthetics were all in play.

See also: Hope in Blasted Landscapes

Further Reading

Kirksey, Eben et al. (2014) “Hope In Blasted Landscapes” in The Multispecies Salon, Durham: Duke University Press, p. 33.

Righteous Fur Collective