Designer Catches Invasive Pythons And Transforms Them Into Fashion

The first time Elle Barbeito skinned an invasive Burmese python she almost lost her lunch. Twice. Initially she nicked the snake’s stomach with the razor and semi-digested prey spilled out. Things got even more disgusting farther down the digestive system. Despite the disgust, Barbeito was after beauty. And she found it, not only in the edgy fashion pieces she makes out of invasive Burmese pythons that she and her father catch, but in the larger process of removing a magnificent but highly destructive predator from her beloved Florida. It’s a blisteringly hot morning in her father’s backyard in Cutler Bay, south of Miami, and the 27-year-old Barbeito pinches the skin on the belly of a thawing 7-foot python and starts meticulously cutting.