Appropriately staged inside Palais Brongniart, Napoleon’s former stock exchange, the Matières Fécales show caricatured contemporary society’s most conspicuous winners: the filthy rich of the one percent. Wearing blood-red-palmed opera gloves, dollar-bill masks, post-op bandages, and Mr. Monopoly eveningwear, the opening section’s cast of chic illuminati was drawn not only in garments, but also through Hannah Rose Dalton and Steven Raj Bhaskaran’s ingenious prosthetics. The varied cast of late stage capitalism cliches was supported by a series of luxury fashion references just as broad; Galliano’s Dior, Alexander McQueen, and Demna’s Balenciaga were the key players, with accompanying parodic cameos from Chanel and Max Mara. All of them were executed through a slickly frayed, flayed and tattered filter.
Matières Fécales are great at creating beautiful grotesques. These Cruella de Vils and Bilderberg Group supervillains were wittily observed—especially the sinister bro in the gray quarter-zip—in a section whose satire sometimes seemed as much cosplay as critique.
Then came a cabal of dark figures in hooded jersey robes, bombers and bikers—all of which featured the brand’s passingly sacrilegious stitched crucifix motif—who gathered in a circle before revealing themselves for the photographers. It was unclear if this cult was a resistance group or a supporting mechanism for the masters of the universe that had opened the show: Either way they were wearing garments for those who want a whiff of Matières Fécales’s subversive identity without committing to the apex merchandise.
In a show full of spectacular Louboutin shoes, most especially the prosthetic feet boots, Daphne Guinness was the unlucky loser: Her platforms plus the train of her narrow skirted, metallic slivered gown proved such an impossible combination that only the noble intervention of Hanan Besovic and other audience members allowed her to make it around the runway. Guinness’s look was part of a less caricatured closing section that featured the brand’s signature high shrug rounded shoulderline on precisely darted wool dresses, Michèle Lamy in a shaggy armed knit dress, and the longevity speculator Bryan Johnson in a fitted rib knit and slacks. The designers closed with a trio of Elizabethan silhouette tailored dresses: real old money.
