THE GUILTED AGE IN FLAMES

While the world was burning and everyone was reading the Epstein files, Paris threw a party.

Mar 09, 2026

Last Page First — March 2026

Paris Fashion Week began March 2, 2026 and runs through the 10th. The same week the show began, the US and Israel were rapidly bombing Iran, killed over 100 school girls, killed Khamenei, Gaza was still burning, Lebanon was being struck again, and the Gulf states were intercepting missiles. The Middle East was ablaze in ways it hadn’t been in decades. And back in the USA, the DOJ was releasing 3.5 million pages of documents about Jeffrey Epstein and some of the most powerful people in the world who were connected to him.

The Epstein files had been dropping in waves since late 2025. By the time the Paris shows opened, the whole world had seen the names. Bill Clinton on a plane. Prince Andrew on a couch. Kevin Spacey. David Copperfield. Mick Jagger. Harvey Weinstein. Jay-Z. The entire architecture of a man who collected people the way others collect art.

And right in the middle of all of it- wars, files, the slow implosion of everything people in power had been quietly protecting for decades- there was a fashion show. Called The Guilted Age.

Matières Fécales Fall 2026. Photo: Filippo Fior / Courtesy of Matières Fécales via WWD

“In the world we live in right now, I think there’s a lot of corruption of power.” — Steven Raj Bhaskaran, Matières Fécales

The show was by Matières Fécales. Their name translates, without apology, to fecal matter. Designers Hannah Rose Dalton and Steven Raj Bhaskaran built their third collection around what they called “the immortals”- their word for the one percent. Gowns adjourned with metal feathers or shredded dollar bills. The closing section of the show was literally titled The Immortals. Nobody planned the timing, apparently…but the timing was everything.

The cast for the show are not your typical models. Michèle Lamy walked in a floor-length grey knit, shoulders enormous and furry. Bryan Johnson, the tech billionaire spending millions to biologically reverse his own aging, whose entire life philosophy is literally called “Don’t Die”, followed in a skin-tight grey knit, looking like someone had dressed a statue of himself. Daphne Guinness shimmered in tasseled silver, her Bride-of-Frankenstein beehive intact, looking like she’d been expecting the apocalypse and had dressed accordingly. Debra Shaw closed the show in an Elizabethan queen silhouette. That finale look was originally designed for the duo’s graduate project, also called The One Percent, where their professor asked them to imagine fashion in the year 2026. That was over a decade ago, and they were right.

→ Full collection: Matières Fécales Fall 2026 Ready-to-Wear — WWD

THE HIGH PRIESTESS

If you don’t know Michèle Lamy, here’s what’s important to know about her: she’s 80. French-Algerian. A vertical tattoo between her brows she calls a grounding symbol. Teeth inlaid with gold and diamonds. Fingers permanently darkened with henna. She is Rick Owens’ wife and creative partner, the person who ran a restaurant in LA that became a gathering place for the underground, then moved to Paris and did the same thing on a bigger scale. She’s been walking fashion week for decades. She is, by her own description, the underground root system. Everything above ground grows through her.

She didn’t just walk this show. She helped build this brand. Matières Fécales found their footing in Paris under the wing of Rick Owens and Michèle Lamy. She is not peripheral to any of this. She is structural.

Michèle Lamy walks The Guilted Age, Matières Fécales Fall 2026. Photo: Filippo Fior / Courtesy of Matières Fécales via WWD

She said it herself, in a joint interview with Marina Abramović. Abramović told her: “You organise the best events in Paris. You connect people with other people that they would never have otherwise met.” Lamy agreed. “I am not an artist like you,” she said. “I am more like a rhizome.”

A rhizome is a root system that grows underground. It’s invisible, connecting everything above the surface together. She chose that word herself, to describe herself.

THE SIBYL

Marina Abramović is one of the most famous performance artists alive. She is also someone who has spent decades at the center of power without anyone in the art world thinking that was worth examining.

Marina Abramović and Michèle Lamy. Photography by JWO for Hube Magazine. Full interview here.

In 2013, Jay-Z adapted Abramović’s 2010 MOMA installation for his “Picasso Baby” video. They pressed their foreheads together on camera. He promised to support her Institute in exchange for using her work. He didn’t follow through, though. “He just completely used me,” Marina told Spike magazine. “And that wasn’t fair.” His team eventually produced a receipt for her, and the Institute apologized.

When the January 2026 Epstein files dropped, Jay-Z’s name appeared in an anonymous FBI crisis intake tip from 2019, describing an alleged 1996 incident. The anonymous caller told the FBI they had woken up in a room with Jay-Z and Harvey Weinstein. The alleged incident dated to 1996. The tip was filed in 2019 and went nowhere. The DOJ warned the release “included tips that could be fake or falsely submitted.” No charges. No investigation. Just a name in 3.5 million pages.

Abramović’s name is in the files too. Not in any criminal context, but in a letter from writer John Brockman to Epstein, praising her gallery work. A simple brief mention. A name in a letter between men who moved in the same world. Lamy is connected to Abramović. Who was connected to Jay-Z. Whose name appears in a file about Jeffrey Epstein.

SPIRIT COOKING

In 2015 Wikileaks released hacked emails from John Podesta. One of the emails was from Marina Abramović to Tony Podesta, inviting him to a Spirit Cooking dinner at her apartment. Tony forwarded it to John but John Podesta apparently never replied to Marina.

Spirit Cooking started as a 1996 performance that Abramović staged in an Italian gallery. She painted what looked like instructions on white walls using pig’s blood. Over the years it became a fundraiser dinner format, which is disturbing in itself. She made soup, called it strange names. Famous people paid a lot of money to be there.

Matières Fécales Fall 2026. Photo: Filippo Fior / Courtesy of Matières Fécales via WWD

Pizzagate was born from the same email dump. Abramović said she was outraged by the accusations surrounding her, stating to ARTnews “It was just a normal dinner.” Spirit Cooking was just performance art…a comment on ritual, not a ritual itself!

Right.

I want to sit with the juxtaposition for a moment. The same week the Epstein files are telling us, again, that the most powerful people in the world were doing things they believed no one would ever see- the same week bombs are falling on Tehran, Gaza, Lebanon and numerous other cities, two women who speak in the language of mysticism and blood and power chose to walk a runway called The Guilted Age, in a section called The Immortals, next to a man who has spent $2 million dollars trying not to die.

One more thing the article world never mentioned: Abramović actively promoted John of God, a Brazilian faith healer of Bill Clinton, since convicted of serial rape and accused of running global sex trafficking breeding farms. Not a passing association. A public endorsement. At some point the pattern of judgment becomes part of the story.

Matières Fécales Fall 2026. Photo: Filippo Fior / Courtesy of Matières Fécales via WWD

The timing could just be coincidence, right? Art has always lived next to power… but I’ll be honest, coincidence requires a lot of faith right now.

THE FILES

Here’s a quick run down of events surrounding the files. Prince Andrew settled a civil lawsuit with Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre. He’s since been arrested as part of an ongoing investigation. Peter Mandelson, former UK ambassador to the US, was also arrested. Former Norwegian Prime Minister Thorbjørn Jagland has been charged with aggravated corruption. Bill Clinton’s name is on at least 17 legs of Epstein’s flight logs. He gave a closed door deposition to the House Oversight Committee in late February and said “I saw nothing, and I did nothing wrong!” The Clintons initially refused to testify at all. You can read my article in full on the Bill Clinton deposition here.

The files also show the FBI knew about Epstein in 1996. Maria Farmer told them. A survivor went to the FBI a full decade before Epstein’s first arrest. They did nothing. You can read more on that here.

A 60 count federal indictment was drafted and then buried. It was then replaced with a deal that let Epstein serve 13 months in a county jail with work release. The prosecutor who signed off on that deal was Alexander Acosta. He later became Trump’s Secretary of Labor. Yeah…I know.

The prosecutor who actually got convictions, who put Ghislaine Maxwell away for 20 years, was Maurene Comey. Daughter of fired FBI Director James Comey. The Trump DOJ fired her in July 2025. No reason given except “pursuant to Article II of the Constitution.” Sources said Trump had been privately venting about having a Comey in his building. She’s since sued for reinstatement. Her last case before they fired her was Sean “Diddy” Combs. Yeah…I know.

The person who put Epstein’s accomplice in prison got fired the same week Trump called the whole investigation “bullsh*t.”

WHAT FASHION DOES

I want to be honest. I’ve loved dark fashion and the goth aesthetic since I was a teenager. Art that uses blood, ritual and transgression has a long and legitimate history. Darkness in art doesn’t mean darkness in the artist.

Matières Fécales Fall 2026. Photo: Filippo Fior / Courtesy of Matières Fécales via WWD

But, let’s be real. Fashion has always been one of the languages that the elite use to talk to themselves. The shows aren’t for us, the front rows aren’t for us, the $3,000 jackets aren’t for us. So when the people who own that world choose to stage a show while wars are being fought in the Middle East, while survivors are finally being believed, while the files prove what everyone always suspected, a show called The Guilted Age about the one percent and the corruption of absolute power, with a cast connected by degrees to nearly every name in those files- I think that deserves more than a fashion review.

The Guilted Age. They named it that. Gilded and guilty, the ornamental and the criminal. Gold coating something underneath... they showed us they laugh while the rest of us were watching the world burn.

Matières Fécales Fall 2026. Photo: Filippo Fior / Courtesy of Matières Fécales via WWD

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