Arriving at the Matières Fécales showroom at Dover Street Market Paris, ahead of its debut at Paris Fashion Week on Friday, I’m not sure what to expect. Not because the brand’s name translates to “fecal matter” (we’ll get to that). Or because the duo behind it have a unique, alien-like appearance, with heavy eye makeup and bald painted heads. But because the first time I came across founders Hannah Rose Dalton and Steven Raj Bhaskaran, it was for a story on Gen Z back in 2019, when the duo were making one-of-a-kind pieces to sell on resale platform Depop.
At the same time, they were DJing to make ends meet, flogging merch at events and producing upcycled pieces to sell online, all while squatting in a New York club. Not a tried-and-tested route to Paris Fashion Week.
In the years that followed, the duo found fame in fashion circles for their viral skin shoes and their widely publicised friendship with Rick Owens. They’ve walked Rick’s shows (Spring/Summer 2025), created show soundtracks and shot campaigns for the designer. Despite the major co-sign, they were still hustling behind the scenes on their own brand, still selling on Depop, with the goal of one day becoming a luxury house.
Its Paris Fashion Week debut comes after the brand was inducted into the Dover Street Market Paris (DSMP) incubator last year, alongside buzzy young names like Vaquera, ERL, Róisín Pierce and Olly Shinder. The incubator, under the stewardship of Dover Street Market and Comme des Garçons president Adrian Joffe, supports emerging labels in its stable with product development and production. And as I visit the Matières Fécales collection pre-show, it’s evident that the scrappy duo aren’t crafting pieces in a New York squat any more. I spot couture-like showpieces, high-quality entry-level jersey and denim, and a collaboration with Christian Louboutin.
Before they take this next step, I sit down with the duo to chart their 10-year journey.
Vogue: Matières Fécales has been around for 10 years, and I knew of you from your early days on Depop. How did we get here, to Dover Street Market Paris and Paris Fashion Week?
Hannah: We first met Adrian Joffe backstage at a Madonna concert in November 2023. We were DJing as the opening act. It was a very VIP situation backstage at that show. John Galliano was there; Jean Paul Gaultier.
Steven: Adrian asked us why we were there, and we explained Madonna loves our cut-up jeans. She has them in every single colour, and we’d made some for the show. He asked where we were manufacturing them and we were like, ‘At home in the kitchen.’ We had a meeting with him the following January (2024) at Dover Street. I think he just wanted to buy the jeans for the store, to be honest. But we came in with a whole pitch for Matières Fécales at Paris Fashion Week. We showed sketches, we showed the direction, and we told him, we can articulate these great ideas, but if they’re not produced really well then they’re just great ideas.
Vogue: An impressive move, to go in with a full proposal. What was Joffe’s response?
Hannah: He took some time to think about it, because it was a big proposal. And then he called us one day in April, months later, and he was like, ‘When do you want to present?’ We basically had a week to present the collection ideas to the DSMP team, but everything was already set in our heads. We already had the collection plan. They said yes and we’ve been working on this collection and show ever since, for almost a year!
Vogue: How has DSMP helped Matières Fécales enter this next phase and become a luxury label?
Steven: We’ve had so much support. For almost a decade, it was only Hannah and I, we never really had interns, we’d do everything ourselves in our apartment. Last week, we were doing the pack shots of the collection for the buyers. There were 20 people in the room — a real model, actual photographers. We’re at Dover Street Market in Paris, it’s a very surreal feeling. And of course, the production, all the clothes are made in Europe, many at the Comme des Garçons factories. We’re actually able to create the things we wanted to create 10 years ago that we’ve been holding inside because we didn’t have the resources.
Vogue: Let’s go back to the beginning, for those who are unfamiliar, how did you get started with Matières Fécales? Where did the idea come from?
Hannah: We met at pattern-making school in Montréal — where we’re from — over 10 years ago. We hated each other. We had hair then, we had eyebrows, no makeup. I was a Burberry girl and he was a Comme des Garçons, Yohji Yamamoto Japanese design person. Then one day at the sewing machines, we started talking, and we realised that we had a lot of the same concerns about the fashion industry. We felt like the industry was maybe a glamorous place on the outside, but on the inside, there were so many issues, like child labour, the environmental impact, the lack of diversity, all these things that were happening underneath. We became best friends, and that’s where it started.
Steven: Slowly, we helped each other gain courage to express ourselves as people and explore our gender expression. The school that we went to — La Salle College — was very technical at that time, so we were exploring identity in quite a serious environment. We worked together on our final project and that became the brand, in 2015.
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Vogue: Where did the name come from?
Hannah: Going back to that first conversation when we became friends, it was just like, this industry is shit, right? There’s a lot of shitty things going on. 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. And then, since we were living in Montréal, which is a French-speaking part of Canada, we were like, why don’t we just say it in French, it sounds way more glamorous.
Vogue: OK, so you finished school and launched Matières Fécales, what came next? How did you get started on Depop?
Hannah: For 10 years, it’s been a hustle. We had to find a way to survive. So after college we eventually moved to New York, and we were squatting in an underground club. Steve and I, we don’t drink or do drugs, so when the club was over at 6 o’clock in the morning we’d be ready to work [in there]. We would take bits of fabric, make outfits out of it and sell it to the drag queens. That’s how it started.
Steven: Then, we started selling on Depop. Because it was a way to sell our designs without having to manufacture at scale. And really, for the past 10 years, that’s kind of how we made a living, selling a lot of upcycled, one-of-a-kind pieces at first, like deconstructed blazers, then small batches of hoodies. We’d use social media and ourselves to promote everything. (Matières Fécales has 715,000 followers on Instagram.)
Vogue: It’s quite the leap from Depop to Paris Fashion Week, was that always the goal?
Steven: Before, there was a limit for us in terms of creativity, because we were using recycled materials. All of these sketches that we had, all these ideas weren’t able to be produced. Whereas now, we’re in a space where we can actually create some of our dream designs without limits — that’s been super exciting.
Vogue: Rick Owens is a friend and mentor of yours. How did you meet?
We first met Rick in 2017. He messaged us two weeks before Halloween and said, ‘I’d love to meet you guys.’ He’d read a New York Times article on us. We went to Rick and Michèle’s for dinner on Halloween. We showed them basically all of our work, all of our designs, and he really wanted to work with us on the skin boots that we did, and maybe do a collaboration for his show. It always felt like designers meeting each other.
Before Rick Owens emerged in Paris, seemingly fully formed as the new dark star of American fashion, he was incubated by experience in Los Angeles — and his first encounters with Michèle Lamy.
Vogue: You’ve collaborated with Rick on several occasions for his shows and campaigns. Has he given you any advice?
Steven: For sure. Michèle hooked us up with the right fur people who make the Rick fur, for example. Rick and Michèle have been super excited about the collection and show. From the shows to the campaigns, we’ve done a lot of creative stuff together, but Rick and Michèle have always known that that’s been our goal to do our own brand and show, so it’s been super nice to have their support. Aesthetically, we’re part of the same vision of beauty, so that’s super exciting, but I think it’s exciting to showcase our version of that — we’re quite different, too.
Hannah: Rick wouldn’t have Louboutins in his show! And also as a woman, I’m naturally thinking about different things as a designer.
Vogue: Who is the intended Matières Fécales customer?
Hannah: We’re targeting a wide range. We want people that are mature, that have a great sense of style. But we also have the Madonna cut-up jeans, the tanks and the T-shirts, also, which are at a lower price point. The tank top is like €150, so it’s accessible for younger people.
Vogue: You’ve collaborated with Christian Louboutin on three different shoes for the show. How did that partnership happen?
Hannah: It’s a co-creation for the show, rather than a commercial collaboration. We were connected with Christian Louboutin’s team via a friend, Terry Maxime Laurie, who curates a lot of major fashion exhibitions in Paris. He’s also from Montréal — Montréal mafia! When we first designed the collection 10 months ago, we manifested the shoes would be Louboutin. We told Terry and he connected us. We had a meeting, and we showed them the designs; and they were pleasantly surprised, because I think they were expecting something more creature-like or aggressive.
Steven: We told them, no matter how creative we are, it’s about sophistication. It’s always about elegance. It’s about finding that fine-tuning. And they really aligned with it. They loved it.
Vogue: You mentioned earlier that the brand was born out of frustration with the fashion industry. How are you facing some of these issues?
Steven: The main thing we are interested in is diversity; visibility for our community. This is our brand. This is our world. So we’re able to cast who we want to cast. We’re able to work with the team to shed a spotlight on a lot of faces that wouldn’t necessarily have the opportunity to be seen during Paris Fashion Week. So a lot of the cast is our friends, our family, plus-size models, trans models. I hope it inspires people, especially during the times that we live right now — those voices do matter.
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