Satan struts at Paris Fashion Week — here are the 3 most demonic designers
At first I thought I was watching scenes from a horror movie.
While I take great pains to keep my algorithm centered on funny cats and clean-eating recipes, a disturbing coming attraction somehow managed to worm its way through.
Matières Fécales translates to ‘Fecal Matter,’ which was the brand’s original name before the designers translated it into the French language to be more ‘glamorous.’
How else to explain these gaunt, dead-eyed figures shambling down a barren path, as enraptured throngs gazed at them from the shadows below?
Just as I was about to check IMDb for a new adaptation of Dante’s “Inferno,” it dawned on me: This hell was no nightmarish Hollywood vision, but something far worse: Paris Fashion Week.
Diabolical by design
Fashion has always been about self-expression, but in 2026, the identities to be expressed are apparently satanic affiliations and allegiance to darkness. We’ve seen similar stunts in the music industry, as many popular artists infuse witchcraft, occultism, and demonic imagery into concerts and music videos less concerned with entertaining than mounting grandiose spectacles of diabolical pageantry.
Like their pop peers, some of today’s most acclaimed designers don’t even attempt to mask their affinities for the infernal, regardless of what revolting headlines dominate our news feeds. The battle for the soul of the culture marches on — straight down the catwalk.
With that, let us gawk at this year’s most harrowing collections, progressing from haunting to pure devilry.
3. Noir Kei Ninomiya
The bronze medal for the most hell-worthy collection goes to Japanese women's wear label Noir Kei Ninomiya, founded in 2012 by designer Kei Ninomiya.
Lovingly described by Vogue Runway as “gloom” made “tangible,” Ninomiya’s 2026 collection is celebrated for its darkly poetic, gothic romance feel. Even the soundtrack is praised for being “the aural equivalent of a nervous breakdown.”
Vogue must be drinking the same Kool-Aid as the film critics calling Emerald Fennell’s blasphemous “Wuthering Heights” adaptation a romance. No amount of tulle or lace can hide either’s attempt to glamorize madness.
Fashion authorities will call Ninomiya’s work sculpturally layered, ethereal, and avant-garde. But those who have been spared the curse of elitism will see it as it truly is: bondage, animalistic horror, and a disturbing fascination with morbidity.
2. Enfants Riches Déprimés
Silver goes to Henri Alexander Levy, whose brand Enfants Riches Déprimés opened its show by parading none other than the Antichrist Superstar himself — the self-described “god of f**k” — Marilyn Manson down a fittingly icy runway. If the collection’s dark, underground aesthetic didn’t already make the designer’s sensibilities clear, Manson — the Bible-burning, crucifixion-simulating shock rocker — opening the show in full gothic makeup surely did.
But if that wasn’t convincing enough, the performance also included a nearly nude model bound and chained to an obsidian statue of a man’s head in a theatrical exaltation of bondage, captivity, and ritualistic sacrifice.
Many fashion designers inanely describe their work as anti-elite or anti-capitalist, but not Levy. He smugly embraces privilege. “No pieces are alike and everything is limited. I have no interest in making affordable pieces for the masses,” he once told the Guardian.
And yet, Enfants Riches Déprimés directly translates to “Depressed Rich Kids,” which was apparently inspired by the “absurd entitlement” of the child elites Levy met in rehab as an adolescent.
A luxury brand that mocks luxury? I’m not buying it. Perhaps a strange loophole to justify one’s perverse proclivities, which apparently include a cashmere noose. “If you were going to kill yourself, wouldn’t you want to do it with a $7,000 cashmere noose?” the self-described nihilistic designer once said.
Suddenly his partnership with Manson makes sense.
1. Matières Fécales
But the gold medal for this year’s most grotesque collection inarguably goes to Matières Fécales — a provocative Paris-based fashion label founded in 2025 by Canadian duo Hannah Rose Dalton and Steven Raj Bhaskaran.
Matières Fécales translates to “Fecal Matter,” which was the brand’s original name before the designers translated it into the French language to be more “glamorous.”
I’ve cocked my head, squinted my eyes, and abandoned everything I know about aesthetics. If any glamour is to be found in the clothing itself, it is certainly eclipsed by deliberate morbidity, but assess the amalgamation of body horror prosthetics, vampiric ensembles, and bloodstained opulence for yourself.
The designers behind Matières Fécales claim this collection, which they dubbed “the One Percent,” is a sharp satirical criticism of elite wealth, power corruption, and inequality.
“This story of power comes to an end, and as we have seen in history time after time, too much power can eclipse our humanity. Perhaps that’s why we aren’t born gods,” the ghoulish duo wrote in their show notes.
We’ve heard similar justifications from many an elite “artist.” They insist their macabre spectacles are merely critiques of the very darkness they put on display. But it is a farce. No serious person publicly condemns his own coterie.
The show itself featured a ritualistic procession of distorted elite caricatures and models in black, hooded robes in a cult-like circular formation. That is hardly the work of detached satire.
Matières Fécales is both a celebration of and an attempt to normalize objective evil. Like Sam Smith’s devil-horned “Unholy” ritual at the 2023 Grammys and Lil Nas X’s lap dance with Satan in “Montero” — both justified as artistic expression and symbolic critique — “the One Percent” is a smirking confession of demonic allegiance packaged as an avant-garde display of irony.
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The devil wears couture
Romanticizing darkness — particularly in high-fashion society — can seem of little consequence to normal folk. The bizarre appetites of the fashion elite rarely spill over into our mundane world.
And yet, there is a price to pay any time something pure — in this case, beauty and creativity — is tainted with darkness. The nature of evil is to beget more of itself. Darkness cannot respect the boundaries of a runway. It must slither its way elsewhere.
Some of you may recall the Balenciaga scandal of 2022. The high-fashion brand known for oversize silhouettes and its former campaigns with Ye (formerly known as Kanye West) found itself in scalding water for two of its holiday advertisements.
One campaign included young children posing with teddy bear handbags featuring bondage-style leather harnesses, spiked collars, and other BDSM-inspired accessories — an unapologetic participation in the epidemic of sexualizing children.
The second campaign only deepened the controversy. Handbags were staged on desks beside printed documents that included excerpts from the 2008 U.S. Supreme Court case United States v. Williams, which addressed the constitutionality of laws prohibiting the solicitation and distribution of child pornography.
Balenciaga didn’t start out facilitating the sexualization of children, but compromise by compromise, it eventually landed there. Embrace darkness, even a little bit, and it will eventually consume you, and then you will consume others. This has been the pattern since the garden, the serpent, and the apple.
Luciferian roots
The fashion world has long tolerated evil — especially if it serves its purpose. Chanel founder Coco Chanel collaborated with the Nazis. Many “luxury” brands come to life in sweatshops — some through the small hands of child laborers.
Every year, models starve themselves, sometimes with fatal consequences, only to be a glorified mannequin for a designer who cares only about how far their cheekbones jut out. Parents rent out their children to modeling agencies, knowing full well the risks to their physical and psychological well-being.
Few can deny the avarice, vanity, and lust at the heart of the fashion industry. But how many can admit that what skulked down Paris’ runways this season was even darker than those deadly sins? It is the worship of that which is hideous, perverted, and disturbing to the intact human soul.
The illicit marriage of beauty and darkness has Luciferian roots. We cannot forget that the most beautiful angel became the great eater of souls.
When these designers promenade their dark creations down the runway, they are telling us with whom they are aligned. They may not even know to whom they bow, just as many satanists deny the existence of Satan. It makes no difference in the end.
But I’m almost grateful for these infernal collections. Let what has long festered on the inside of the elite world manifest itself externally on runways — or stages or screens or red carpets or wherever there are eyes to see. Permit the masses to behold what binds the hearts of the fashion, art, entertainment, and political worlds together. If the spiritual horror becomes tangible, perhaps they will then choose the light.
News stories come and go every year, but what we remember are the people at the center of them.
In a rapidly de-Christianizing society like ours, we shouldn’t be shocked when luxury fashion brands both condemn and engage in child abuse.