Rick Owens Casts Alien-Looking Couple for His Converse Campaign
Fecal matter on the sole of your shoe? Eww! Not cool.
Fecal Matter in a campaign for Converse x Rick Owens sneakers? Super cool!
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Owens has conscripted the alien-looking Canadian couple of Hannah Rose Dalton and Steven Raj Bhaskaran — who founded Fecal Matter in 2016 and who boast 751,000 followers on Instagram — to front the campaign for the square-toed Converse x Drkshdw TurboDrk Chuck 70.
“I love proposing a tolerant and inclusive world by committing to a nonstandard personal aesthetic,” Owens told WWD. “My friends Fecal Matter do that so beautifully and agreed to present this collab for me.”
Pale and bald, with darkened eyeballs and zombie makeup around their mouths, Dalton and Bhaskaran donned skintight leather bodysuits and huddled close together for the campaign shoot, putting the focus on their chunky sneakers with their outsized tongues climbing up the shin.
The Fecal Matter campaign is to launch on social media.
Owens unveiled the Converse collaboration, under the umbrella of his Drkshdw brand, at his fall 2021 men’s show in Venice, Italy, last January.
The designer gave Brutalist airs to Chuck Taylors, adding three toe caps and two layers of rubber outsole, giving the shoe heft and the look of bumper cars.
Exaggerated, bombastic and “a little grotesque” are some of the adjectives he has used to describe his approach to sneaker design. In an interview with WWD earlier this year, he noted his “aesthetic gesture has always been about promoting the idea that perfect or traditional beauty can be very strict and cruel” and that pushing the boundaries “signifies tolerance for other ideas.”
The Converse sneakers are to go on sale on July 27 at converse.com, rickowens.eu, Rick Owens boutiques and other select retailers around the world. The collaboration between Converse and Owens is to continue throughout 2021.
Besides its popular Instagram feed, Fecal Matter also markets a range of clothing and accessories on Depop.
See also:
Rick Owens Tells All About His New Converse Collaboration
Converse and Kim Jones Launch First Collab
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