Matières Fécales’s Seedy and Dystopian “The One Percent”

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Matières Fécales is a fashion brand based in Paris that translates to “fecal matter” in English. Founders Raj Bhaskaran and Hannah Rose Dalton created the brand in 2014 after they met, simply calling it Fecal Matter. The switch to the French name was made in 2025 to refine the brand for wider audiences.

For their fall-winter 2026-27 line, Matières Fécales presented audiences at Paris Fashion Week with a show that concerns itself with one thing: power; power by means of money. It explores the relationship between power and money and these different groups of people, all symbolizing different walks of life. The fashion brand’s designs have always been envelope-pushing and avant-garde, evoking an alien-esque uneasiness in the hearts of fashion lovers. Its skin shoes are among the most recognizable designs of the brand.

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This show, titled “The One Percent”, is no exception to the line’s roots in high fashion, and it comments on power and high-society wealth by creating dystopian socialite characters that carry the story on their backs. The models walking the runway for this collection perform more as actors, portraying archetypes of the titular “one percent.”

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The One Percent

The show’s story is told in three waves of models that each represent a different schema of power or relationship to money. This first section is the physical amalgamation of unapologetic materiality, and the show sheds a whole new meaning on the phrase “filthy rich”. These characters are the titular and elusive “one percent”, and viewers have likened them to a quintessential money-obsessed and hungry ‘bourgeois family’. One of the most talked-about pieces from the line is the “Guilt Glove” — arm-length gloves that serve as a motif for the phrase “caught red-handed”, symbolizing the blood on the hands of these elite characters.

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One model dons a pearled mouth gag, providing commentary on the perversion of wealth and money. Her skin is painted white like porcelain fine china — ancient like the notion of “old money”, and easy to break after one mere crack. The matching tweed outfit — a la Chanel — that she wears is tattered and fraying, signifying the unraveling of her humanity and self due to the importance of materiality taking over. Corruption caused by money is the focal point of the bourgeoisie family, and it is the malignant dormancy of their “guilt” that adds insult to injury.

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The Power of Community

The power of community phase is the point in the show that shines a faint glimmer of hope on the bleak glamour of the story that Matières Fécales is telling. It is more of a highlight of the designers themselves and their friends, family and found family, with Bhaskaran and Dalton walking the show themselves. It is meant to be a reminder that support and flourishment can be found in human connection, and a fulfilling life cannot stem from wealth and materiality.

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“The Immortals”

Matières Fécales returns to its bleak premonitions for the future with “The Immortals” wave. “The Immortals” represents the power of the future and science, specifically the wealthy’s current obsession with anti-aging and immortalized bodies. The brand invited the infamously polarizing Bryan Johnson to walk in this part of the show. Johnson, at 47, has gained public spectacle and scrutiny for his “biohacking” endeavours — a process in which he has willingly participated as a sort of ‘patient one’ for doctors that put him under a meticulous health regimen in the hopes of reversing his aging. His participation requires his personal funding, at a steep price tag.

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What do you think of Matières Fécales’ “The One Percent”? Let us know @VALLEYmag on Instagram!

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