In this seminar, I will first review the main features of models of fermion masses and mixing based on new symmetries of flavour. I will then discuss how light the new flavour dynamics is allowed to be by the constraints from flavour-changing processes and possible UV completions of this kind of models.

In the second part of the seminar, I will introduce dark matter (DM) as a fermionic singlet under the Standard Model (SM) gauge group that is however charged under the flavour symmetry. Interactions between DM and SM particles are then only mediated by the scalar fields that spontaneously break the flavour symmetry, the so-called flavons. In the case of gauged flavour symmetries, the interactions are also mediated by the flavour gauge bosons. I will discuss the construction and the generic features of this class of models and then the phenomenology of an explicit example.