General · EdgepediaSeptember 17, 20268 min read

Matières Fécales

Matières Fécales (French for "fecal matter"; also known in English as Fecal Matter) is a Paris-based avant-garde fashion house founded by the Canadian design duo Hannah Rose Dalton and Steven Raj Bhaskaran, who are partners in both work and life. The label is known for a self-described "post-human aesthetic," sculptural couture-influenced tailoring, and a deliberately off-putting name chosen to critique the fashion industry.¹^•²

Key fact	Detail
Founders	Hannah Rose Dalton (born 1995, New Zealand, raised in Montreal) and Steven Raj Bhaskaran; met in 2014 at LaSalle College, Montreal³^•⁴
Name	Translates to "fecal matter"; the designers said they wanted a scientific-sounding word for a blunt judgment of the industry, rendered in French because it "sounds way more glamorous"¹
Early business	Handmade and upcycled one-of-a-kind pieces sold on the resale platform Depop, promoted through Instagram and self-directed imagery¹^•³
Signature object	The "skin shoes," humanoid stiletto heels with fleshy protuberances, first designed in Photoshop in 2018 and made physically in silicone with artist Sarah Sitkin⁴
Institutional backing	Inducted into the Dover Street Market Paris incubator in 2024, which provides product development and production support⁵
Paris Fashion Week debut	March 7, 2025, with the collection "The Other" at the Hôtel Le Marois²^•⁶
Celebrity clients	Zendaya, Lady Gaga, Kylie Jenner, Madonna, and Rihanna, among others⁵^•⁷

Origins in Montreal

Dalton and Bhaskaran met in 2014 as fashion students studying pattern-making at LaSalle College (Collège LaSalle) in Montreal. They initially disliked each other, then bonded over shared concerns about the fashion industry, including child labor, environmental impact, and lack of diversity, as well as over Francis Bacon paintings and Norwegian black metal. They worked together on their final school project, which they describe as the origin of the brand in 2015.¹^•⁴

The founding date is reported differently across sources. The McCord Museum's EncycloModeQC and TheFashionDB place the public establishment of Fecal Matter in Montreal in 2016,⁸^•⁹ while NOWFASHION and Vogue France give 2014 as the founding year¹⁰^•¹¹ and the Fédération de la Haute Couture et de la Mode house page lists 2025, the year of the Paris-based label's formal creation.¹²

Not long after they met, the two shaved their heads and eyebrows and adopted the dramatic, alien-like appearance, bald painted heads, heavy eye makeup, and prosthetics, that became their public identity. Their outfits incorporated window blinds, medical neck braces, and prosthetic appendages.⁴

The name

Dalton has explained the name as arising from the pair's first conversations about the industry: they felt there was no other word for its problems than a vulgar one, and "fecal matter" was the scientific version. Living in French-speaking Montreal, they translated it into French. Bhaskaran has also said the name was intended to "challenge the wasteful side of fashion," and the duo told journalists early on that a deliberately off-putting name would act as a filter, ensuring customers chose the product for its quality rather than the label.¹^•⁵^•⁶

Depop years and the skin shoes

After college the pair moved to New York on Halloween in 2015 and spent six months squatting above a Brooklyn nightclub, making outfits from scraps of fabric to sell to drag queens. They then built a business selling upcycled, one-of-a-kind pieces such as deconstructed blazers, and later small batches of hoodies, on Depop, using social media and their own image to promote everything; they also DJed to make ends meet.⁴^•¹

By 2018 the duo had become known for their so-called skin shoes, humanoid stiletto heels with fleshy protuberances that they designed in Photoshop and posted online. That year they collaborated with the California-based artist Sarah Sitkin on an actual silicone pair.⁴ Their first catwalk show, Non-Human, staged in October 2018 at the Mandrake Hotel in London, brought the digital fantasy into material reality with a physical version of the shoes molded to Dalton's feet.¹³ Earlier milestones included a SHOWstudio presentation in 2017.⁹ In 2019 their "Skin Heels" boots appeared in the Montréal Couture exhibition at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, and the duo received the Digital Influencer of the Year prize at the Canadian Arts and Fashion Awards.⁸

Rick Owens and Dover Street Market Paris

The designers first met Rick Owens in 2017, after he read a New York Times article about them and invited them to dinner with his partner Michèle Lamy on Halloween. Owens and Lamy became longtime friends and mentors; the duo have walked in Owens's Spring/Summer 2025 show, created show soundtracks, and shot campaigns for him.¹ In 2022, with the money they had made modeling for Owens, they moved to Paris and established a small atelier.⁴

The turning point came through Madonna, a fan of their cut-up jeans, who commissioned costumes from them for backup dancers on her Celebration tour at the end of 2023. The duo met Dover Street Market and Comme des Garçons president Adrian Joffe backstage at a Madonna concert in November 2023, where they were DJing as the opening act, and pitched him an upscale Matières Fécales aimed at the luxury market. After a January 2024 meeting at Dover Street, they were inducted into the Dover Street Market Paris incubator in 2024, the same structure that has supported labels such as Vaquera, ERL, Róisín Pierce, and Olly Shinder. Under the incubator, production moved to Europe, with many garments made at Comme des Garçons factories.¹^•¹⁴^•⁵

Paris Fashion Week

Debut, The Other (March 2025). The house's official Paris Fashion Week debut took place on March 7, 2025, over two salon shows at the Hôtel Le Marois, with the collection titled "The Other," which the designers described as an ode to being fearless with identity. The show opened with strong-shouldered black wool tailoring and included distressed knits, outerwear with D-ring collars, shredded denim, and Dalton's closing winged gown, named Ange Arc. It featured a co-creation with Christian Louboutin on three shoes pairing the label's curved-heel design with Louboutin's red sole. Vogue Runway's review called the house "Paris fashion's Next Big Little Thing."²^•⁶^•⁵^•¹

Subsequent shows. The Spring/Summer 2026 show, titled "Hannah" after Dalton, followed on September 30, 2025.¹⁵^•¹⁶ The Fall 2026 collection, "The 1%", staged on March 3, 2026 inside the Palais Brongniart, Napoleon's former stock exchange, caricatured the wealthy one percent through dollar-bill masks, post-op bandages, and Monopoly-style eveningwear.¹⁷ For Spring/Summer 2027, "The Ninety Nine Percent" inverted that formula: on September 28, 2026, the house staged what production accounts describe as the first fashion show ever held on the Place de la République, with 99 models, every one a person of color, circling the Monument à la République. The show drew on Bhaskaran's childhood in Guyana, reworked sari textiles from Varanasi and handwoven cotton from Burkina Faso into couture volumes, and closed with models carrying Sarah Sitkin's hyper-realistic statues of blindfolded white men in suits. Rihanna attended, wearing the Matières Fécales x Christian Louboutin collaboration.¹⁸^•¹⁹^•⁷

Aesthetic, influences, and casting

The house's stated aesthetic is a "post-human" one, treating the body as a canvas and clothing as a tool for erasing social prejudice. The designers cite Alexander McQueen as their chief reference, calling their approach the "religion McQueen" for its technical rigor, alongside Rick Owens and image maker Nick Knight; their FW26 collection reinterpreted fetish-culture objects such as masks, straps, and ball gags as fashion items.²^•¹⁶^•²⁰

Casting is central to the label's identity. The designers cast friends, family, plus-size models, and trans models, aiming to give visibility to faces that would not otherwise appear at Paris Fashion Week; for SS26 they photographed the people of their daily professional lives rather than professional models, and the SS27 finale tableau included Bhaskaran's mother, sister, and niece.¹^•²¹^•¹⁸ The duo's Instagram following grew from about 715,000 in early 2025 to nearly 800,000 by early 2026.¹^•¹⁶

References

Initially written Sep 17, 2026 · Reviewed: Sep 30, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Sep 30, 2026; Oct 11, 2026; Oct 25, 2026