How Matières Fécales Cast 99 Non-White Models for Its Latest Show

For their new collection, titled The 99%, Matières Fécales made casting central to the show’s message, assembling 99 models of colour across generations, professions and subcultures. TG Casting’s founders explain the process

Who gets to be visible in fashion? It’s a question that has long preoccupied Matières Fécales. Founders Hannah Rose Dalton and Steven Raj Bhaskaran met at fashion school in Montreal before launching the label in 2015, building an audience online with alien-looking DIY clothes, extreme prosthetics and warped images that played with conventional ideas of beauty. Their early work was confrontational and bodily; more recently, that same visual language has been blown up into distressed tailoring, severe outerwear and couture-scale dresses.

Their previous collection, The One Percent, turned the language on fashion’s wealthy elite, with blood-red gloves, money masks and warped New Look silhouettes satirising extreme wealth and the pursuit of eternal youth. Spring/Summer 2027 reversed the proposition – The 99% placed 99 models of colour beneath Paris’ Monument à la République, dressed in everything from punk leather and distressed tailoring to handwoven Burkinabé cotton and sari textiles worked into vast couture volumes.

Matières Fécales has always built its world around a recurring community of models, performers, artists and outsiders. For this show, casting became even more fundamental. While Michèle Lamy, Rick Owens and Rihanna watched from the front row, the runway was populated by a cast assembled by emerging agency TG Casting, founded by Tom Goddard and Tanguy Gavignet. Choosing who occupied that space became part of the collection’s argument: who gets to be seen and who fashion allows to belong. Here, Goddard and Gavignet explain how they built the cast.

What were you looking for in a model for this show?

As always, we were looking for someone with presence, whether that’s bold or quiet – someone who makes you feel something or makes you curious about them. We’re interested in people who feel like real individuals rather than simply someone who looks good on a runway, although obviously that matters too. It’s also important that they feel like someone we could be friends with or hang out with.

What was the brief from Matières Fécales, and what makes someone right for their world?

This season, the brief was 99 models, all people of colour. It was really Steven’s story – his lived experience and his feelings about how he sees the world. For any casting director, finding and managing 99 people, while making sure every single person felt right for the story and the wider message we were collectively trying to communicate, was a lot. But it was a lot in the most beautiful way.

With Hannah and Steven, the brief always comes months in advance. We knew the direction even before the previous show, so we had a lot of time to research, digest it and understand what they wanted. It wasn’t simply about finding 99 people, but finding the right 99 people and understanding what each could bring.

For Matières Fécales specifically, it comes back to someone who evokes a feeling. Somebody who inspires you and, hopefully, feels inspired by being part of it themselves. They need to be able to tell a story, embody something and communicate that emotion to an audience.

What do you notice in a model that other people might miss?

Energy. At a lot of castings, models walk in, do their walk and leave. We try to make the effort to actually speak to people when time allows. If they try on a look, we watch how they feel in it and how they move. Alongside the movement team, we then try to help them embody some kind of character.

Were there people in this cast you were particularly excited for audiences to discover?

We genuinely love and appreciate all of the models. Some personal standouts were John, Kennedy and Steve – the huge muscle men we found by visiting Bercy Street Workout and speaking to the people there. Then there was Bbyafricka; the gorgeous Aluel; Naima, who is in her first season; Tjiki, a former world champion athlete; and Mounia, one of the first Black couture models and a muse of Yves Saint Laurent.

Sebit, who closed the show, is also very special to us. Afterwards he broke down with happiness, which was such a beautiful moment.

We could keep going. They all bring something completely different, but somehow it comes together to tell one story. The response from the models has been really special too – so many of them felt like they were genuinely being seen, and that makes us feel as though we did our job.

When you look at the final line-up, what do you think it says about the world of the show?

The final line-up brings pure, authentic joy. It feels genuinely inclusive rather than performative. There are so many completely different people, backgrounds and personalities standing together, yet it still feels incredibly united.

How did you find the cast?

It was truly a mixture of everything: traditional modelling agencies, street casting, Instagram and extensive research. There were established models, artists, political figures and athletes. We’re always looking for interesting people, wherever we might find them.