Founded by Hannah Rose Dalton and Steven Raj Bhaskaran, Matières Fécales insists on a vital vision of beauty that is expansive, audacious and unbound
- Who is it? Matières Fécales is the label from Hannah Rose Dalton and Steven Raj Bhaskaran
- Why do I want it? Emerging from their cult online following, the label offers an audacious vision of beauty, realised through exquisite craftsmanship and inclusive, defiant silhouettes
- Where can I find it? Matières Fécales is available via the label’s own website and Dover Street Market
Who is it? In French, the name Matières Fécales slips off the tongue with ease; in English, it hits with the grotesque force of ‘Fecal Matter’. Yet for the label’s founders, Hannah Rose Dalton and Steven Raj Bhaskaran, within that clash was a way to hold two truths at once: the toxic excesses of fashion, and the steadfast devotion that sustains them. “It literally means ‘shit’,” Raj laughs, “but for us, the concept has always been duality. To make that work, the clothes have to be well made – that’s the only way a name like ours makes sense in a luxury space.” This season, their second collection, Hannah, presented as part of the official Paris Fashion Week calendar, gave this tension form: garments conceived to endure, to embrace, to empower.
Dalton and Bhaskaran first crossed paths at pattern-making school in Montreal, though each had already been marked by fashion in different ways. “I’d always loved clothes and dressing up, but I guess I was about ten when the factory in Bangladesh collapsed,” Dalton recalls, “I thought, well I have to learn to make my own clothing because I can’t support this industry.” For Bhaskaran, who is of Guyanese and Sri Lankan background, fashion came later, through drawing (he is still the mastermind behind their sketches today). “I was already sketching manga, but then I saw a Fashion Television episode on Jean Paul Gaultier and clothes entered my drawings,” he says.
What followed has become something of industry lore. In 2014, the duo launched their label, selling designs on Depop while squatting in a New York club, before collaborating with Rick Owens – first with their viral skin shoes – and eventually being welcomed into the Dover Street Market family by Adrian Joffe.
If their debut collection, presented in March, was about “exterior, armour, and what we go out in,” this season graciously threw open their world through a love letter to Dalton, her softness and vulnerability. Staged within the Hôtel d’Evreux on Paris’ rarefied Place Vendôme to “symbolically open the doors that are normally closed to people like us,” as Raj explains, the collection became a gesture of belonging. With Nikki Lilly, Renata Litvinova, Lewis G Burton, Dragoness Lola von Flame, Allanah Starr and Gena Marvin all walking the runway, the show insisted on a vital vision of beauty that is expansive, audacious and unbound.
Why do I want it? The clever duality that underpins the label’s name is also at stake in their garments, though never at the expense of quality or construction. At the heart of the most recent collection was pink, Dalton’s favourite colour (which she calls “optimistic given the times that we live in”), recast as both a coddling softness and a subversive force. Gentle pinks appeared in custom tweeds softened with tulle – a tender twist on the fabric’s conservative connotations – as well as in a monumental couture gown crafted from 125 metres of tulle in nine layers. Elsewhere, elegant silk suiting, narrow at the waist and commanding at the shoulders, was chastened with raw hems, while leathers buckled, even in their tautest forms.
If Matières Fécales have raised a village, that village has, in turn, raised them. A rose-crowned brim in inky black with powder-pink lining, at once severe and decadent, topped several looks courtesy of magical milliner Stephen Jones. Towering heels were stamped with the iconic red soles of Christian Louboutin, and leather goods were elevated to luxury. Their ongoing Uncensored series extended that dialogue further, created in collaboration with the Pierre Molinier Foundation to honour the queer French erotica photographer who once worked in secrecy, denied the platform Dalton and Bhaskaran hold today.
This idea of inclusivity extends beyond their designs and models into their business acumen. Speaking before the show, they emphasised their commitment to making the collection as widely available as possible. Many of the artisanal pieces from their debut have been commercialised to increase accessibility, and they are pushing for their designs to be produced in a full range of sizes. “We have a lot of friends with different body types,” says Bhaskaran, “and we are really, really dedicated to finding a way to do that in the best way possible.” In a fashion landscape awash with rhetoric, it’s refreshing and invigorating to see designers who speak directly to the bodies that will live in their clothes, no matter their walk of life.
Where can I find it? Matières Fécales is available via the label’s own website and Dover Street Market.
