FashUrns at NYFW: Dan Madden Makes Memorialization Haute Couture
I don’t want this to take on an “I knew him when” tone. I’m no urn hipster, but, pulling up the transcript from the last time I interviewed Dan Madden he was still a little dizzy from the online reactions he was getting. What started as an alternative way to get people’s attention for his own funeral home had exploded into the FashUrn shows people have come to expect from Dan the Funeral Man. He was getting promotional urns in the mail and I asked him what he thought the future held
“We’ll see where where this is gonna go, as far as partnerships and different things, time will tell on that,” he said.
What he didn’t know was that his @DantheFuneralMan channel and persona were going to grow even more in the ensuing months, and what he didn’t dare to hope out loud was that just a few months later he’d have his own show during New York’s Fashion Week, but that’s precisely what happened.
The Next Logical Step
The Haus of Harlene reached out to ask if they could feature his unique urns on the runway at New York Fashion Week, Madden didn’t just say yes. He laid down a non-negotiable condition: “I’m gonna be one of the models walking out with the leopard urn.”
They agreed, and it seems as if that was their plan from the start anyway, The designer paid his way to New York, and suddenly, the small-town Ohio funeral director was stepping into a world far removed from the quiet halls of his funeral home.
When the offer came in from Haus of Harleen, Madden was ready for it. The designer has been described as 19th century-inspired urban with a dark sense of humor. Having a funeral director show urns was, for them, right on brand. Madden was to be mixed in with the models. Harleen chose the clothes, but Madden chose the urns.
I kind of told them that the ones I was bringing, the leopard prints are pretty popular. I brought this cat-stronaut urn, it’s a cat that looks like an astronaut, it’s become very popular,” he said. “But they designed the clothes for me. The back of it, it was kind of neat, said FashUrn week on it when I turned around.”
The outfit was funky, knee-length shorts with a lime green left leg and a black, large flower print right leg that matched the shoulders of his hunter green vest, and a white silk? shirt with black buttons (one missing). Everything was flowy. It was both unfuneral-director and un-Dan Madden at first glance, but Madden had a when-in-Rome attitude.
“I was very nervous. I mean, I’ve done that walk several times, but when you have lights in New York and, and I wasn’t really keen on the outfit,” he said. “But, I’m like, I’m committed now. A lot of the Fashion Week clothes are a little eccentric, a little different. I’m just rolling with it and whatever happens happens.”
Strutting into the Spotlight
Taking the stage on Saturday evening, Sept. 12, alongside high-fashion models carrying his signature leopard print, he stepped onto the runway wearing his custom outfit stamped with “FashUrn Week” across the back. He leaned into the moment, delivering a strut that won over the crowd, with attendees remarking afterward on how much they loved his walk.
That was the best, because, it wasn’t that long ago that this was just an experiment, an exercise in community outreach. After buying Stark Memorial in Salem, Ohio, Madden spent six years making educational videos to help people feel like they knew him before walking through the door.
The experiment truly took off when he grabbed a butterfly urn from his selection room for a quick runway video, a impulse clip that exploded into a global phenomenon, launching a weekly show, fashurns.com, and requests for custom urns from around the world.
Madden’s notoriety spread beyond even his intended audience. I had a funny moment this afternoon when I was talking to my wife about the day ahead. I told her I was interviewing this guy who does something he calls FashUrn shows, and she stopped me: “Oh! I’ve seen him on Instagram. He’s, like, a thing!”
And it looks as if he’s just getting started.
“It was supposed to be a one hit wonder, one video,” Madden said. “And like people were like, ‘No, this needs to be a permanent show.’”
Taking such a radical leap wasn’t without risk.
“You didn’t know how people were going to react about a funeral home owner walking on a runway with an urn,” Madden said. He initially worried his peers might view the antics as an embarrassment to the profession, and he did get a couple shots taken at him when he first started getting noticed. Eventually, though, most people came around and by the time he made his FashUrn show week walk, he’d found mostly acceptance.
By Sunday night after the show, funeral directors, owners, and tech leaders flooded his inbox and LinkedIn with messages thanking him for breaking down long-standing barriers. Viewers echoed the sentiment, leaving comments saying they were no longer afraid of death and were eager to select their own urns.
Nothing captured his newfound lifestyle quite like his trips around New York, carrying seven urns inside his luggage to film impromptu “fashion road shows” at iconic landmarks like the Empire State Building, Times Square, and Chinatown. Standing in line for the ferry to the Statue of Liberty, his bag triggered a routine check at security. When the guards paused at the contents, Dan had to quickly reassure them: “Yeah, this is an empty urn,” he told them, “Grandma’s not in this urn like I’m not scattering at the Statue of Liberty.”
In a way, FashUrn Week is really a perfect analogy for changing attitudes around deathcare. In haute couture, clothes go from utility to expression, Urns, the literal last thing many people will wear, have made that same leap. They offer people a way to approach end-of-life planning with personality, beauty, and a sense of style.
