The One Percent.
The latest show from Matières Fécales, titled The One Percent, proposes a rather impolite idea… that extreme wealth may not be entirely healthy for the human soul. The concept is delivered with an admirable lack of subtlety. The models appeared with dollar bills masking their eyes, a gesture so blunt it was almost delicious: the elite, quite literally, blinded by the currency that defines them. A visual metaphor so direct it almost feels rude… which, frankly, is part of the charm.
The silhouettes moved with their shoulders back and their hands delicately clasped, in the choreography of etiquette. Yet, after all the etiquette, one notices something far less ethical, red upon the palms of their gloves. Not a polite crimson, or some profoundly rich burgundy, but the unmistakable suggestion of blood. The message required little decoding. It is an old idea, of course, that extreme wealth carries with it a certain moral corrosion. What makes the show clever is how it performs this accusation visually rather than rhetorically. You never confess, you simply walk, beautifully composed, while the evidence stains your hands. Fashion, when it wishes to be intelligent, often communicates best through precisely this kind of contradiction.
There’s also a slightly grotesque undertone running through the whole thing. The prosthetics, the altered faces, the almost artificial bodies give the impression of something not entirely human anymore. It’s hard not to think about the modern billionaire obsession with longevity, biohacking, and various attempts to outlive the rest. A dream of transcending the ordinary limits of the body. But the most enjoyable irony of the entire spectacle lies in the context. This is a show criticizing the one percent, performed at Paris Fashion Week, the height of the fashion pyramid, in front of people who are not exactly strangers to wealth. It becomes a show that critiques the very system it condemns. You could call that hypocrisy, or you could call it the only place where such a statement could realistically breathe.
Now, the clothes. This is where things become slightly less exciting. The ideas are big, the symbolism is clear, the staging is clever—but the garments occasionally feel quieter than the message supporting them. Not terrible, not embarrassing, just… somewhat underwhelming compared to the scale of the message. One keeps forcing a polite smile while waiting for the clothes to catch up to the designer’s ambition.
Strangely, this imbalance ends up working in the show’s favor. The staging carries the intellectual weight, allowing the clothes to operate almost like uniforms within the story rather than its main attraction. The gloves, the masks, and the gestures become the real garments of the collection. The rest simply fills the space between them.
And perhaps that is the real elegance of the idea. Wealth has always been performative. The house simply staged that performance more explicitly than usual and with just enough o-negative on the gloves to make the audience slightly uncomfortable, which, in this case, feels entirely appropriate.
And to be fair, how could one resist? I do have a weakness for a well-dressed satire.
WRITTEN BY FREDDY ESPINAL