Pamela Paquin's source for fashion is either "tres chic" or will make you shriek.
She creates neck muffs, leg warmers, hats, purses and more from roadkill, or "accidental fur," as she prefers to call it.
As owner of Petite Mort Furs, a 2-year-old Boston-area company, she said she's offering the fur industry an alternative to wild fur trapping and large-scale fur farms.
"All this fur is being thrown away," Paquin said. "If we can pick that up, we never have to kill another fur-bearing animal again."
Keith Kaplan, head of the Fur Information Council of America, said his trade group considers all North American furs to already be ethically and environmentally responsible.
"Production of fur in North America is highly regulated with guidelines set through years and years (and millions of dollars) of scientific study," he said via email, declining to comment on Paquin's company or the general idea of using roadkill for fur. "In fact, the populations of every species used by the industry today are as abundant, or more abundant, than they were a century ago."
Animal rights groups also have mixed feelings about roadkill fur.
"We'd just say it's in very poor taste," said Kara Holmquist at the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, declining to elaborate.
Lisa Lange, a senior vice president at People for the Ethical Treatment for Animals, or PETA, said that there's "never an excuse" to wear fur, but that it's "far better" to wear roadkill than farmed fur.
Others worry her products could only serve to prolong the industry they've spent decades trying to defeat.
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