Writing reviews for Vogue Runway is almost always a huge pleasure. Totally ridiculously, PRs radio ahead when you arrive, like you’re the president in an episode of 24, swooshing into a vital UN conference about how to combat some looming alien invasion. Damn right we can fix that. You get to see the artistry of some the finest creative minds in the world up close, fresh from the oven. It’s so, so, fun. One exception, however, is when you get to Dsquared2 on a Sunday night, see the show, then have to leave what is clearly going to be a storming party to go and write about the clothes. Gah.
As Dean and Dan Caten joined Paris Hilton, Patrick Cox, Elizabeth Hurley, and several hundred other vodka-swilling hot-to-trot party people to shake their maracas to Wildchild’s “Renegade Master,” your correspondent dutifully withdrew. Blame Canada.
Dean and Dan’s first co-ed show started as a barnstorming love-letter to the nation every liberal-minded American (secretly) wants to emigrate to. For both women and men they mixologized myriad north of the border checks, denims, and Canadian-goose-down quilt coats into an overloaded mélange of hot Mountie, poutine-eating hotness. Gender fluidity was absolutely the order of the night, thus butch backpacks were spackled with sequined florals and the men’s looks became increasingly baroque. In the women’s, a prairie-widow aesthetic—Erdem with spangles and surgery—increasingly declared itself very convincingly. Considering the twin-ness that is so integral to this brand, it now seems almost surprising Dsquared2 didn’t go co-ed sooner—it suits them beautifully. Party hard, damn you.
