October 14, 2025 |
In February, Dean and Dan Caten got arrested. It went down in front of the Dsquared2 Bros Co factory in Milan – which was posing as the legendary New York club Paradise Garage – and was like a fever dream out of Donna Summer‘s movie musical Thank God It’s Friday. Vintage and military cars pulled up as Doechii ran down the street in a fur-lined Canadian parka turned into a bolero and an ICON T-shirt with a train. Tyson Beckford moonlighted as a bouncer, clad head-to-toe in a leather daddy outfit, models formed a Kiss tribute band and Naomi Campbell gave Cher circa If I Could Turn Back Time. As for the arrest, actress Brigitte Nielsen did the honours, looking like a Tom of Finland sketch if Helmut Newton had drawn it.
an unbreakable brotherly bond enabled the Dsquared2 founders, Dean and Dan Caten, to survive a traumatic childhood and thrive creatively
“Somebody’s got to go to jail when you have a party,” Dean points out, summing up the mood of a 30th anniversary show that spanned the inspirations of the brothers’ lives. “It was also about breaking free from our golden cuff, the binds that hold us,” he says. “Freedom.”
Weeks after the show, Dsquared2 announced it would be ending its decades-long licensing deal with Staff International, expressing a desire to take full control of their business. Since then, they have embarked on an amicable transition plan with the product development and distribution company, which will see the Catens gain full independence for their brand by 2027. “We’ve found a balance that’s better for everybody,” Dan says. The 60-year-old identical twins are speaking to me via a video call from inside Ceresio 7 in Milan, the ritzy rooftop club they opened in 2013. Dean is wearing sunglasses and sipping an afternoon cosmopolitan. “It’s how she wakes up in the morning,” Dan notes. The club stands as a monument to everything the Catens have achieved since leaving their native Canada for Italy in the 1990s and founding Dsquared2 in 1995 against all odds – and then some.
an unbreakable brotherly bond enabled the Dsquared2 founders, Dean and Dan Caten, to survive a traumatic childhood and thrive creatively
Their lives have been shaped by a fundamental fight for autonomy now being expressed in gaining direct control of their brand. They dedicated the anniversary show to their long-time collaborator Julie Enfield, who introduced them to the worlds of fashion and clubbing and later became a photographer and author. In an open letter to her, they offered the public a glimpse of the chaos of their upbringing. Calling her “a light in all the darkness”, they described their childhoods as “a limbo of poverty, family dysfunction, abuse and social negligence […] tossed between foster care, group homes and conversion therapy”. The brothers credited Enfield with teaching them how to “waltz into a place like we belonged there, to be fabulous, to believe in ourselves”.
“You created a world where we felt like we mattered, and made us believe in ourselves when the idea that we could become somebody had never crossed our minds. Without you, we would never have made it out of Willowdale [in Toronto], let alone to Milan,” they wrote. “When you moved here to work as a model, you encouraged us to follow – even got us a place rent-free.” Dean and Dan are yet to tell the public their story in full, but have gradually opened up more about the experiences that shaped them. “People are aware of bits and pieces,” Dean says. “I don’t think everybody knows everything, but I think it helps people to understand that we’re human.” Suffice to say that the sassy scenes of exuberance and empowerment that played out in February’s milestone show were loaded with significance. It was a demonstration of making it, with all the sentiments of independence, empowerment and self-expression that have fuelled Dsquared2.
an unbreakable brotherly bond enabled the Dsquared2 founders, Dean and Dan Caten, to survive a traumatic childhood and thrive creatively
“The journey to where we are today is what’s making everything click and work. There are thoughts and values and ideas beneath it,” Dan says. On the Milanese fashion scene, the twins didn’t just find tolerance, but a celebration of who they are. I like to think that the joy and drama and glamour they still conjure wherever they go is a kind of reminder to themselves that they made it to the other side and intend to stay there. As designers who have often been pigeonholed as fun and frivolous, the brothers’ letter to Enfield portrayed them in a weightier and more sensitive light. Does the label of fun ever bother them? “Yeah, it does, but it also doesn’t matter. One day they’ll know. Not every day is sunny,” Dean says. “Take the bad with the good and come out smiling. Being frivolous is like being pretty: you catch on to it and get bored of it. So, if people are half-smart, they’ll know there’s got to be some substance under that,” Dan adds.
Julie Enfield, the friend who introduced the twins to the worlds of fashion and clubbing
This is not to say that fun isn’t a cornerstone of Dsquared2 too. Witty, snappy and with a tendency to break into song, Dean and Dan are personifications of the theatres of camp that unfold on their runways. They’re not hard to tell apart. Dean is more petite, Dan more athletic. They share a wardrobe but get their first names sewn into every garment they own so they don’t pick up the wrong size. They both drink cosmos: Dan from a tall glass, Dean from a dainty coupe. As a somewhat deadpan northern European who falls asleep after a martini, I learned early on to simply sit back, let them do their thing and carry me away to Planet Caten with all the 1970s disco re-enactments, vogueing outbursts and general queenery that an evening (or a morning, for that matter) with the twins entails. Their energy is enthralling.
Over the years, that energy has attracted connections with a hall of fame of industry colleagues such as Giorgio Armani, who couldn’t make it to the anniversary show “but sent us beautiful flowers and a note,” Dean says. “He came to our show when we were first starting out. He wanted to see who these boys were.” Later on, they reunited in Mykonos, where the Catens spend their summers. “We met him in a restaurant where Mr Valentino was also having lunch with Elizabeth Hurley. Mr Armani asked us what we normally do in Mykonos. We said, ‘Well, at 3am we usually go to Cavo to watch the sun come up and dance.’” To their surprise, that night Mr Armani joined them in the club. When it comes to Caten anecdotes, this is pretty standard.
Dean and Dan are ‘arrested’ by Brigitte Nielsen at Dsquared2’s 30th anniversary show
Asked about their best memories, Dan says their time creating costumes for Britney Spears’s Circus Tour in 2009 has a special place in their recollection. “Just a memory like being in her dressing room and she’s eating ice cream and talking about boys… That’s kind of, like, ‘Really? Is this really happening?’” They haven’t spoken to Spears in recent years, but their fandom persists. “I think all of the artists we got to work with are some of the best memories, because we were big fans of all of them: Madonna, Britney, Rihanna, Christina… We saw people as people and they saw us as people and we did something they liked. It was pretty amazing,” Dan says. Those moments are etched in the pop-cultural memory: Dsquared2 designed Madonna’s costumes for 2000’s Don’t Tell Me video and for the Drowned World Tour in 2001; Christina Aguilera modelled in their show to Dirrty in 2004; and Rihanna walked the runway to Shut Up and Drive in 2008. When Doechii opened the anniversary show this February, it cemented the designers’ tradition of keeping their finger on the pulse.
Did the brothers ever imagine Dsquared2 would get this big? “I think it came out better than we’d dreamed. We just dreamed of being something, and lasting,” Dean says. As some of the industry’s most successful independent designers and part of the one per cent, the life they lead today is a far cry from the childhood that made them dream of a better existence. Although, they say, they don’t give their fortune much thought. “We don’t really feel it,” Dean shrugs. “We’re the two per cent!” Dan interjects. “We’re more project-oriented. We don’t buy tons of stuff,” Dean says and pauses. “Investment pieces, maybe.” Today, the brothers divide their time between Milan and Cyprus. “All we really care about is being respected and appreciated,” Dan says. “And being remembered as [making] a contribution, doing things people said we shouldn’t or couldn’t, and taking responsibility for our actions.”
Taken from 10 Men Issue 62 – BIRTHDAY, EVOLVE, TRANSFORMATION – out on newsstands now. Order your copy here.
