Red Carpets, Runways Are Suddenly Littered With Fecal Matter

The brand name behind recent showstopping fashion moments isn't quite as delicate as their romantic and otherworldly looks. Zendaya'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 the AP reports is, seemingly suddenly, everywhere. The design duo behind Matières Fécales, Steven Raj Bhaskaran and Hannah Rose Dalton, have aimed to subvert beauty with their own alien-like personal style, including dramatic white makeup, shaved heads and eyebrows, and skin boots made to look like realistic feet.

Bhaskaran and Dalton started the brand as students at Collège LaSalle Montréal, going from selling designs on the secondhand shopping platform Depop to showcasing collections at Paris Fashion Week. The designers have said the name reflects their view of the fashion industry, a perspective they initially summed up with a more vulgar word. "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 last year, adding they translated it into French, which "sounds way more glamorous." Bhaskaran told the Fashion Neurosis podcast in March that the name was also intended to "challenge the wasteful side of fashion."

Despite the visceral name, tastemakers from Lady Gaga to Kylie Jenner are embracing their designs. "There is this beautiful tension in their work between the finesse and the decaying, and the strong and the soft," celebrity stylist Brad Goreski said. 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." Much more on the brand here.