Hailee Steinfeld went home empty-handed from the Academy Awards last night, but her brand of true grit was alive and well this morning at Dsquared². Dean and Dan Caten rustled up a Wild West theme for Fall, complete with a covered wagon, a mountaintop backdrop, and a snow machine. The frontier girls sported long black leather duster coats, faded and frayed jeans, prairie blouses with high collars and puffed shoulders, and belted and peplumed jackets. A blazer and full-legged pants with a paper-bag waist in wrinkly linen looked like it had been filched straight out of one of their pardner's rucksacks. The 20-gallon hats were a no-brainer for the Catens, who love an OTT extra. As for what to make of the models' lace-up boots with ice skate blades for heels, well, it must be freezing at those altitudes. That would also explain the collection's grandiose furs.
If this wasn't the high camp that the brothers have sometimes produced on the runway, it wasn't quite real life, either. You'd need Rooster Cogburn as an accessory if you gussied yourself up head to toe. Piece by piece, though, Dsquared²'s grittier girls could make it work.
