Matières Fécales’ Fearless Paris Fashion Week Debut

Paris has long been a crucible for fashion’s most subversive auteurs, yet few debuts have felt as seismic, as wholly transgressive, as the arrival of Matières Fécales onto the hallowed runways of Fashion Week. The Montrealaise duo, early alumni of Montreal-based fashion incubator Lignes de Fuite, Hannah Rose Dalton and Steven Raj Bhaskaran, have spent years cultivating a world that exists at the nexus of the post-human and the poetic, the unsettling and the sublime. After a decade of the duo cutting their teeth as content creators, and nightlife auteurs (see our Fashion Art Toronto after party Never Conform with Matières Fécales), their singular vision has now crystallized into a collection that is as exquisite as it is incendiary—an unequivocal statement that the avant-garde is no longer relegated to the margins.

For those familiar with the pair’s early oeuvre—waxen, androgynous figures clad in sculptural exoskeletons, alien visages obscured beneath layers of latex and illusion—their Fall/Winter 2025 offering revealed a startling refinement. It was a study in meticulous tension: brutalist tailoring softened by spectral draping, fetishistic accents reframed through the lens of couture craftsmanship, the grotesque distilled into something disarmingly elegant. It was a masterclass in fashion’s most intoxicating contradiction—the ability to unsettle while seducing.

Counting the likes of Chappell Roan, Rick Owens, Michèle Lamy, Daphne Guinness and Christian Louboutin in the frow, the collection was a highly anticipated affair. The silhouettes were precise, almost surgical in their execution. Shearling jackets and tailored suiting stood like monolithic armor against the body, their exaggerated shoulders sculpting an imposing, almost sovereign form. Symmetry reigned supreme—trench coats were dissected and reassembled with deliberate, almost anatomical precision, evoking the same razor sharp silhouettes of Sarah Burton’s tenure at Mcqueen, while eveningwear unravelled in undulating cascades of tulle adorned occasionally with grandiose winged accents, as though the wearer was a fallen angel mid-metamorphosis. Leather, rendered in shades of abyssal black and sumptuous cream, carried the weight of something sacred or ceremonial.

Perhaps the most audacious flourish came in the form of their collaboration with Christian Louboutin. The shoes, with their surreal curvature and near-unstable architecture, became objets d’art in themselves—both an homage to movement and a challenge to its very mechanics. But this was more than an exercise in aesthetic provocation. This was a manifesto. Dalton and Bhaskaran have built a career on the premise that fashion is not merely adornment, but a site of transformation, a reclamation of the body from the constraints of normative beauty. Their work has long existed within the digital ether, a dreamscape of otherworldly avatars and speculative identities. And yet, in Paris, the vision materialized with an exacting, undeniable physical presence. It was high fashion at its most conceptual, yet rendered with an astonishing degree of polish—an evolution that places them firmly in dialogue with the likes of Rick Owens, Margiela, and Comme des Garçons.

For Canadian fashion, this moment is nothing short of a revelation. Montreal has long been a bastion for the avant-garde, but Matières Fécales’ arrival on the Parisian stage signals an inflection point—proof that our most radical voices need no longer exist in the periphery. Their work demands space, commands attention, and, perhaps most thrillingly, resists easy classification.

In an era where fashion is increasingly distilled into digestible, algorithm-driven ephemera, where designers are pressured to prioritize palatability over provocation, Matières Fécales stand defiantly in opposition. Their work is uncompromising, unrelenting, and wholly unafraid—a reminder that true innovation lies in the refusal to be anything less than excessive, less than extreme, less than entirely, impossibly sublime.

Cody Rooney is the Editor in Chief and senior contributor at liminul.

He is a PhD candidate, digital content specialist, writer, editor, multi-media artist, and photographer.