Fecal Matter: The Avant-Garde Brand Taking Over Red Carpets
The brand name behind some of the most showstopping fashion moments of 2026 isn’t quite as delicate as the romantic, otherworldly looks it produces. When asked what ethereal gown Zendaya was wearing at the “Odyssey” premiere in New York, her stylist Law Roach responded with two words: “Fecal Matter.” The actress’s angelic strapless gown with feathered white wings was the work of Matières Fécales — yes, in English, Fecal Matter — the Paris-based, high-end fashion house founded in Montreal over a decade ago that is, seemingly suddenly, everywhere.
A Name That Challenges the Industry
The design duo behind Matières Fécales, Steven Raj Bhaskaran and Hannah Rose Dalton, have built their brand on subverting beauty conventions. Known for their own alien-like personal style — dramatic white makeup, shaved heads and eyebrows, and skin boots made to look like realistic feet — the pair met as students at Collège LaSalle Montréal and launched the label in 2014, going from selling designs on the secondhand platform Depop to showcasing collections at Paris Fashion Week.
The provocative name was a deliberate choice. “There’s no other word for it, but how can we say it in a glamorous way? So we’re like, ‘fecal matter’ is the scientific word for it,” Dalton recalled to Vogue, adding that translating it into French “sounds way more glamorous.” Bhaskaran told the “Fashion Neurosis” podcast that the name was also intended to “challenge the wasteful side of fashion.”
Dalton’s inspiration to enter fashion came from a tragedy: the 2013 Rana Plaza factory collapse in Bangladesh, which killed 1,134 garment workers. She wanted to protest against the non-glamorous side of fashion, according to Wikipedia’s entry on the brand.
From Cult Status to Paris Fashion Week
After years of building a cult following, the brand was taken under the wings of Dover Street Market in 2024, after first meeting its president, Adrian Joffe, backstage at a Madonna show. The global retail concept stores offer emerging brands development support, from production and distribution to sales.
The designers were invited onto the official calendar for Paris Fashion Week last year, debuting “The Other,” a collection they described as an ode to being fearless with identity. It featured a collaboration pairing their striking curved-heel design with Christian Louboutin’s signature red sole.
In March, during Paris Fashion Week, the duo unveiled “The One Percent,” with models theatrically strutting with red paint on white opera gloves and wearing eye masks made of dollar bills. The collection showcased how “power affects us all,” they wrote on Instagram. The show’s theme was a stark contrast to the billionaires sitting front row at other fashion week shows.
“What they were able to build in such a small amount of time is really insane in terms of world building and creating their world,” Augustin Maunier, Dover Street Market’s director of brand development, told AP News. “There’s real storytelling behind it.”
Celebrity Moments Define 2026
The brand’s celebrity moments in 2026 have been remarkable. Lady Gaga wore a black feathered gown at the 68th Grammy Awards in February. Sarah Paulson wore a voluminous gray distressed ballgown paired with the money mask at this year’s Met Gala. Demi Moore wore a frayed, full-volume Barbie-pink ballgown as a Cannes Film Festival jury member — a break from her usual structured looks, according to her stylist Brad Goreski.
“There is this beautiful tension in their work between the finesse and the decaying, and the strong and the soft,” Goreski told AP News. “They’re designing clothes for themselves. That’s authentically them, but they’re bringing it to like a whole other audience.”
Kristen Bateman, a longtime fashion and culture writer who has attended all three of the designers’ Paris Fashion Week shows, said their rise is driven by the industry’s desire to see something new. “If you’re looking at the high-fashion brands like Chanel and Dior, it all sort of starts to blend together,” she said. “And this feels like it’s in its own category. You can’t replicate it.”
The brand’s reach now extends beyond red carpets. In a television ad for Dunkin’, Kylie Jenner wore a blush-pink satin structured blazer with over-the-top shoulder pads. The designers also created a distressed Victorian-style dress for model Gabbriette Bechtel’s wedding to musician Matty Healy — the first bridal commission in the brand’s history, as Page Six reported.
What’s Next
The brand is scheduled to close the opening day of Paris Fashion Week’s Spring/Summer 2027 presentations on September 28, a slot typically reserved for brands at the level of Alexander McQueen in his prime. Museums including the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and the Museum of Fine Arts in Montreal have exhibited the brand’s work.
“We’re rooting for them because they’re younger designers who have something to say,” fashion commentator Hanan Besovic, who posts online as @Ideservecouture, told AP News.
With their next Paris Fashion Week show set for September, fashion connoisseurs are eagerly waiting to see what’s next from a brand that has transformed a provocative name into one of the most sought-after labels in fashion.