The bad boy is a stock figure in the Caten Repertory Company. Dean and Dan have followed his devil-may-care fortunes through any number of all-boys-together environments. But today the boy was paying the penultimate price for his badness: He was banged up in the pen. (There's only one more stop on his trajectory: Guess he'll get The Chair next season.) And, from the looks of the poor soul who was dragged straitjacketed down the catwalk to open the show, he wasn't being cooperative enough for Nurse Ratched.
With a gender switch or three, a scenario that conflated a prison with a psychiatric institution seemed topically in line with the profile of TV shows like American Horror Story: Asylum and Orange Is the New Black. Orange was, in fact, the opening gambit, in quilted nylon, followed by a procession of the artfully distressed denims that are the bread and butter of DSquared²'s massive success. There were mutations: Denim and wool combined in a double-breasted blazer, straitjacket straps fore and aft, and a subtle sense of oversize, because that's the way uniforms are "on the inside."
For the rest, the Catens claimed inspiration from the attire of the institutional "support" system: "Guards, psychiatrists, priests, and lawyers" were listed in the show notes. If we needed more proof of the twins' expertise as tailors, there were some extremely elegant coats cut from double-faced wools, and an excellent variety of bonded leather and denim jackets. But maybe it was the shadow of the soul-destroying grind of an institutionalized existence that sapped the usual joie de vivre from this presentation. Lest we forget, Straitjacket Boy made one last catwalk lurch as the curtain came down.
