Matières Fécales makes a splash at Paris Fashion Week

Paris Fashion Week witnessed a debut show on Friday from one of the most unusually named brands in the luxury clothing industry: Matières Fécales, which means fecal matter in French. After meeting in fashion school in Montreal, Hannah Rose Dalton and Steven

Raj Bhaskaran set up their label 10 years ago in opposition to the idea of the clothing industry as a place of beauty and aspirational consumption.

Interested in the "post-human aesthetic", the duo also built up a large following on Instagram with photo shoots featuring them in heavy Gothic and extraterrestrial-influenced make-up and clothing, with shaved heads and eyebrows.

Speaking after the show in an ornate 19th-century Parisian hotel close to the Champs Elysees, Bhaskaran said that when he and Dalton started together "nobody really understood our esthetic."

"It took so long for people to accept what we do and consider it beautiful.

And I think there's been a huge evolution," he added.

Friday's collection, the first that will be mass produced, featured models with blacked-out eyeballs, white facepaint and smeared red lipstick.

"This collection is about being fearless in your identity. It's about walking into a room with your head held high, even if nobody wants you there," the designers wrote in notes accompanying the show.

Matieres Fecales was chosen as a name to ensure that people who bought their clothing only wanted it for the design, rather than the name on the label.

Rose told reporters that they would try to stay true to their original ethos, even as they become more deeply drawn into the profit-oriented world of mainstream fashion.

"I think every day we somehow have the confidence to walk out and look like this and do that," she said. "So it's the same with the industry. We're not going to change just because of who's sitting in the front row and all that."

The label produced a small collection for Selfridges in London in 2019 and took another major step in its development by tieing up with the influential

Dover Street Market retailer to make Friday's collection.

The range was more commercially-minded than the one-of-kind works the pair used to sell online, with apparent influences from US designer Rick Owens.

It featured leather and shearling jackets, a grey mohair dress, as well as an almost classic-looking trench coat.(AFP)