It’s time to break out your nutria furs: it’s getting down right cold in New Orleans. Maybe slip into your nutria ball gown if you’re feeling fancy or don your nutria bikini if you’re feeling a little risqué.
While temperatures will be sub-freezing outside, these furry fashion innovations and more will be taking center stage at the Righteous Fur Fashion Show tonight at the Marigny Theatre.
Billed as “a nutria-palooza,” the show will also feature nutria-inspired poetry, music, and video screenings, and will culminate in the resurrection of the Mystic Herd of Nutria carnival krewe.
Local designer Cree McCree, founder of Righteous Fur, organizer of the show and contributor to OffBeat, describes the featured couture as an “homage to the nutria.” McCree founded the project upon receiving a mini-grant from the Barataria-Terrebonne National Estuary Program with the goal of reigniting a market for the nutria’s luxuriant fur.
McCree originally experimented with the swamp rat’s potential during “BioReMadeAble,” her September 2008 show at the Kirsha Kaechele Projects, at which she featured fashion created from Louisiana’s ecosystems.
McCree later teamed up with local designer Oliver Manhattan to create a prototype line of products for Righteous Fur. The clothing line debuted last September in Thibodaux at La Fête d’Ecologie, a festival celebrating the ecological and cultural significance of Louisiana’s wetlands.
“Marsh munchers,” McCree calls them. The nutria are an invasive species originally brought to Louisiana from South America precisely for its fur, but they have become a threat to Louisiana’s vulnerable coastline. The rodent eats aquatic vegetation and currently impacts 20,300 acres of wetlands, according to the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries.
The importance of the ecological issue and her passion for recycling drew McCree to the project. Nutria were already being hunted for a state-sponsored bounty of $5 a tail, so McCree saw a clear waste of potential. Most trappers turn in the tail for their cash and dispose of the rest of the animal. McCree calls Righteous Fur “guilt-free,” and nutria couture means “the nutria [will] not have died in vain.”
McCree purchases pelts locally from Pitre Fur in Galliano, a family business that has been keeping the fur trading tradition for over 60 years—and might be the last in the area. These days the Pitres mostly sell furs to China and, ironically, to Argentina, the nutria’s original home.
“There’s probably too many natural predators down there for them,” McCree laughs.
Fifteen designers received two nutria pelts each and the fruits of their labor will be unveiled tonight. As for McCree’s contribution, her specialty is tribal jewelry made from the distinctive orange nutria teeth and Balinese silver.
The evening rounds out with nutria-inspired poetry, interpretive dance and drumming, screenings of nutria-related films including Miss Pussycat’s North Pole Nutrias (with voice actors Chris Rose and Sheriff Harry Lee), and a live performance of the song “Five Dollars a Tail!” by the Jurassic Parish Folk Ensemble.
During the fashion show, Helen Gillet will play along with the Mystic Herd of Nutria Drum Corps in a nutria fur bikini.
The night will climax with the resurrection of legendary carnival krewe the Mystic Herd of Nutria. McCree came into contact with “Mama Nutria” Adele Bertucci and they arranged for the Herd’s resurrection in concert with the show.
The Herd dates back to the 1970s but has been recently dormant. Their ball immediately follows the fashion show in the Allways Lounge, featuring swamp pop DJ Minor Strachan.
The Mystic Herd of Nutria’s participation “just brings it to the next level,” McCree said.
Friday, January 8, 2010
Marigny Theatre & Allways Lounge @ 2240 St. Claude Avenue
Doors open at 8 p.m. Showtime at 8:30 p.m.
Righteous Fur/Mystic Herd of Nutria Ball follows in the Allways Lounge
Tickets $10 at the door; $15 for reserved tables and VIP seating.
