Matières Fécales Opened Paris Fashion Week by Taking Over Place de la République With 99 Models of Color

Matières Fécales opened Paris Fashion Week on Monday, September 28, with a Spring/Summer 2027 show staged outdoors at Place de la République. The collection is called "The Ninety-Nine Percent," and it was cast with 99 models of color. Rihanna arrived late and sat in the front row in a custom look from the brand, next to Michèle Lamy and Rick Owens, according to W Magazine.

It is the second half of an argument. Last season's show, "The One Percent," drew on co-designer Hannah Rose Dalton's privileged upbringing and the tropes of the ultra-wealthy, W reported. This season belonged to Steven Raj Bhaskaran, who built it from his childhood, raised by a single mother in extreme poverty in Guyana. He told W the collection is an homage to the strength of the 99 percent, people without access to fashion, beauty or luxury. He walked in the show with his mother, his sister and his niece.

The clothes were what the label is known for: W described fire-hued feathered dresses, pink embroidered ballgowns with Indian design influences and sculpted hourglass skirt suits, in a palette heavy on black and red.

The staging did the arguing. FashionNetwork reported that Bhaskaran closed the show with two models, one in a white single-button suit and one in a gold lamé gown with a long train, each carrying a mannequin of a billionaire on their shoulders. Its writer also pointed to the image that would linger in France: three Black women walking in blue, white and red dresses, the last in a red veil, in a show staged around the square's statue of Marianne. FashionNetwork quoted the designer's show note saying the first fashion show at Place de la République was being put on by a group of immigrants, which we have not independently confirmed as a first.

The label started in Montreal in 2014 with Bhaskaran and Dalton, who met as students there, and W says it has shown in Paris for two years and now sits in Dover Street Market's brand development division. For a brand whose name translates to "fecal matter," Dalton told W the name has turned some people off and drawn others in, and that the momentum proves it doesn't matter what something is called.

That is the read for anyone watching the business. A show about wealth inequality, held outdoors in a square with political weight, with Rihanna in the front row, is also strong marketing for a brand that sells feathered ballgowns. The designers made the cast and the setting the point, and that is what got covered.