Northern fashion designer learns how to knit fur, hopes to bring skills back to N.W.T.

Beautiful, long-lasting and supports local harvesters — those are a few reasons why N.W.T. fashion designer D'Arcy Moses wants to incorporate fur knitting into his repertoire, and he's travelled to Ontario to learn how. 

Moses, an artist from the Pehdzéh Kı̨ First Nation in Wrigley, N.W.T., is working under expert Paula Lishman around the Ottawa Valley. He says he likes using the natural materials in fur knitting and he enjoys being able to showcase Dene culture. 

"Dene people started knitting fur pre-contact with the hand weaving, with the raw winter rabbit skins. So if I can take that and I can incorporate it as part of my own work and celebrate who we are as Dene people and celebrate this technique," Moses said. 

This is a new venture for Moses, a designer for more than 25 years. His work has been sold at Holt Renfrew, Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus, and earned him the Queen's Jubilee Award. 

Lishman has developed her own method of knitting fur, which allows fur to be on both sides of the garment. Moses says the results are worth it, but it's a cumbersome process. 

"You have to stretch it and block it then cut the skin into one continuous strip to start the yarn-making process, and how to mix that with a yarn and spin it into a fur yarn," Moses said. 

He's currently experimenting with moose hide for a scarf and using beaver to make a shawl. 

Moses hopes to eventually bring these skills north and do workshops in N.W.T. communities, especially if it supports harvesters on the land. 

But he wants to make sure he can knit fur on his own, without Lishman's guidance, before he comes back to the territory. 

"And hey, maybe one day I could be travelling around northern communities and teaching Indigenous women and men how to do this," Moses said.