{"id":848171,"date":"2026-08-08T16:40:27","date_gmt":"2026-08-08T16:40:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/848171\/"},"modified":"2026-08-08T16:40:27","modified_gmt":"2026-08-08T16:40:27","slug":"why-are-celebrities-now-wearing-fecal-matter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/848171\/","title":{"rendered":"Why are celebrities now wearing ‘Fecal Matter’"},"content":{"rendered":"

The brand name behind recent showstopping fashion moments isn\u2019t quite as delicate as their romantic and otherworldly looks. When asked what an ethereal Zendaya was wearing for the Odyssey premiere in New York, her stylist Law Roach responded: “Fecal Matter”.<\/p>\n

Zendaya\u2019s angelic strapless gown with feathered white wings was the work of Mati\u00e8res F\u00e9cales \u2014 yes, in English, Fecal Matter \u2014 the Paris-based, high-end fashion house founded in Montreal over a decade ago that\u2019s, seemingly suddenly, everywhere.<\/p>\n

\"Zendaya<\/p>\n

Zendaya attends the premiere of The Odyssey at AMC Lincoln Square on Tuesday, July 14, 2026, in New York. (Source: Associated Press)<\/p>\n

Why Mati\u00e8res F\u00e9cales is called … that<\/p>\n

The design duo behind Mati\u00e8res F\u00e9cales, 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.<\/p>\n

Bhaskaran and Dalton started the brand as students at Coll\u00e8ge LaSalle Montr\u00e9al, 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.<\/p>\n

“There\u2019s no other word for it, but how can we say it in a glamorous way? So we\u2019re like, ‘faecal matter’ is the scientific word for it,” Dalton recalled to Vogue last year, adding they translated it into French, which “sounds way more glamorous”.<\/p>\n

Bhaskaran told the “Fashion Neurosis” podcast in March that the name was also intended to “challenge the wasteful side of fashion”.<\/p>\n

A representative for Mati\u00e8res F\u00e9cales said the designers were not available for comment.<\/p>\n

Despite the visceral name, tastemakers from Lady Gaga to Kylie Jenner are embracing their designs.<\/p>\n

“There is this beautiful tension in their work between the finesse and the decaying, and the strong and the soft,” celebrity stylist Brad Goreski told The Associated Press.<\/p>\n

And after years of building a cult following, they were taken under the wings of Dover Street Market in 2024, after first meeting its president, Adrian Joffe, backstage at a Madonna show. The global retail and concept stores offer emerging brands development support, from production and distribution to sales.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s desire to see something new.<\/p>\n

“If you\u2019re 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\u2019s in its own category. … You can\u2019t replicate it.”<\/p>\n

From cult status to Paris Fashion Week<\/p>\n

Milan Tanedjikov, a Coll\u00e8ge LaSalle Montr\u00e9al design teacher, had a front-row seat to Dalton and Bhaskaran’s rise and says they have finally found the balance between their art and fashion.<\/p>\n

“They have created this, like, very interesting organism together,” he said.<\/p>\n

The designers were invited onto the official calendar for Paris Fashion Week last year, debuting “The Other”, a collection they described as an ode to being fearless with identity. It featured a collaboration pairing their striking curved-heel design with Christian Louboutin\u2019s signature red sole.<\/p>\n

“At their very core, what drives them is absolute freedom of expression, and they want to push the boundaries of what is human,” Tanedjikov said.<\/p>\n

\"Sarah<\/p>\n

Sarah Paulson arrives at The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute benefit gala on May 4, 2026, in New York. (Source: Associated Press)<\/p>\n

In March, during Paris Fashion Week, the duo unveiled “The One Percent”, with models theatrically strutting with red paint on white opera gloves and wearing eye masks made of dollar bills. The collection showcased how “power affects us all,” they wrote on Instagram.<\/p>\n

“What they were able to build in such a small amount of time is really insane in terms of world building and creating their world,” Augustin Maunier, Dover Street Market’s director of brand development, said. “There\u2019s real storytelling behind it”.<\/p>\n

The show’s theme was a stark contrast to the billionaires who had been sitting front row at other fashion week shows. At this year\u2019s Met Gala, where Jeff Bezos was an honorary chair, actor Sarah Paulson wore a voluminous, grey, distressed ball gown from the collection, paired with the eye-covering money mask.<\/p>\n

Goreski pulled from “The One Percent” for Demi Moore’s wardrobe as a Cannes Film Festival jury member, telling the AP he wanted something new for Moore. Moore’s frayed, full-volume, Barbie-pink ball gown with a distressed bow was a break from her usual structured looks. <\/p>\n

\"Jury<\/p>\n

Jury member Demi Moore appears at the premiere of the film Paper Tiger at the 79th international film festival, Cannes, southern France, on May 16, 2026. (Source: Associated Press)<\/p>\n

In 20 years of dressing Moore, Goreski said she hardly ever chooses a full-skirt “cupcake” shape, but that she fell for the designers\u2019 artistic vision and storytelling.<\/p>\n

“They\u2019re designing clothes for themselves,” he said. “That\u2019s authentically them, but they\u2019re bringing it to like a whole other audience.”<\/p>\n

Find their clothes on Lady Gaga and a Dunkin\u2019 Doughnuts ad<\/p>\n

Early supporters of the brand fittingly included boundary-breaking performers Madonna and Lady Gaga. Madonna even invited them to DJ on her tour in 2023, and they’ve designed custom looks for Gaga\u2019s live performances, including Coachella. <\/p>\n

At this year’s Grammys, Gaga wore a high-neck, feathered, black gown from the designers, a dark angel to Zendaya\u2019s heavenly Odyssey look.<\/p>\n

\"<\/p>\n

Lady Gaga arrives at the 68th annual Grammy Awards on Sunday, February 1, 2026, in Los Angeles. (Source: Associated Press)<\/p>\n

Now, though, their bold designs are going beyond red carpets. In a television ad for Dunkin\u2019 Doughnuts, Kylie Jenner wore a blush-pink, satin, structured blazer with over-the-top shoulder pads, a designer choice that generated some amusement online from those previously unfamiliar with the brand’s name.<\/p>\n

The designers created a distressed Victorian-style dress for model Gabbriette Bechtel’s wedding to musician Matty Healy, a first for the brand. With their next Paris Fashion Week show set for September, fashion connoisseurs are eagerly waiting to see what\u2019s next.<\/p>\n

“We\u2019re rooting for them because they\u2019re younger designers who have something to say,” fashion commentator Hanan Besovic, who posts online as @Ideservecouture, said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The brand name behind recent showstopping fashion moments isn\u2019t quite as delicate as their romantic and otherworldly looks.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":848172,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[180825,418982,418983,305721,64,63,447,134,1433,167504,31053,418984,14323],"class_list":["post-848171","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-academy-of-motion-picture-arts-and-sciences","tag-ampas","tag-arrivals","tag-arrives","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-oscars","tag-pmcarc","tag-red-carpet","tag-step-and-repeat","tag-topics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/848171","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=848171"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/848171\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/848172"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=848171"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=848171"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=848171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}