“Teenage madness!” shrieked the Caten twins in unison backstage before tonight’s show. They’ve come a long way from their native Toronto, and celebrating their 20 years in fashion called for fashion entertainment with all the right Dsquared2 pyrotechnics, boasting a co-ed collection which took their mashup-styling prowess to new heights.
“We’re looking back to look forward, thinking of what we’ve done in the past, and the energy of the Dsquared2 rebels,” they said. “We’re celebrating what we were already pushing a long time ago—being yourself, being individual, and the freedom of feeling comfortable in your own skin. No judgment.”
The Dsquared posse of teenagers flaunted a string of characters straight from the Catens’ dorm room years: the geek, the goth, the starlet, the emo, the femme, all in their own broken-up/put-back-together-again finery. The dorm room in question was actually meticulously reproduced as the catwalk’s backdrop, furnished with all the cool paraphernalia which has populated the teenage years of every generation, from X to Y to Z and everything in between. TikTok superstars Nic Kaufmann and Jean Carlo Jashlem opened the show, followed by a riotous stream of elaborately styled outfits which gave full credit to the Catens’ mastery of The Art of The Mashup.
Describing the zillion combinations the twins were able to concoct would, in fact, be madness. To very partially summarize, Western fringed jackets, Canadian outerwear, crystal-studded destroyed denim, cowboy leather jockstraps, ultra-low slung cargos, exposed boxers, teddy bear bombers, lace panties and see-through camisoles were put into their fashion percolator, spit out and re-assembled into beautifully body-revealing crazy ensembles. “Playing with girl things, playing with boy things, nothing is hotter than a hot guy in girly panties!” they enthused. “So we kind of went there. Openness! Playfulness! Courage! And no judgment.”
