For Spring/Summer 2025, twin creative masterminds Dean and Dan Caten turn up the heat while bringing a renewed sense of focus to their vision of maximal multiplicity for Dsquared2. The brand hones in on a sense of duality – between elegance and edge, softness and strength – but in doing so, creates one of their most unexpected, exciting, and undeniably sexy fashion mashups yet. It is a liberated community of artists, athletes, and aesthetes, an underground milieu that is poetry salon, wrestling league, and kink scene all in one.
As always, the collection’s spirit of freeing multiplicity has its basis in Dean and Dan’s signature penchant for synthesizing innovative material treatments and imaginative details with cross-genre references to fringe fashion subcultures. For Spring/Summer 2025, this practice takes shape as a particularly focused intersection of elegance and edge. Sheer chiffons cascade poetically around the body, but reveal skin-tight bondage harnesses or barely-there bralettes beneath. Denim peels away into sculptural latex. Asymmetrical sheer jersey tanks are treated with laminating techniques, balancing brutalist geometry and soft bodily harmony. Laces coil up legs, holding outer garments together but exposing the skin beneath. Broad-shouldered suits with voluminous pleated pants reference 80s workday ensembles, while leather biker jackets and thick-soled studded creepers suggest that same stylish character’s nocturnal alter ego.
The color palette, too, embodies a spirit of poetic softness anchored by the strength of desire: blush, dust, and powder-blue tones take on further depth and delicacy in translucent fabrics like chiffon and latex, but reworked bondage gear in black leather keeps things tied down. All the while, occasional pops of vibrancy or metallic shimmer punctuate the show’s transitional moments.
As the collection progresses, the subtle sense of restrained athleticism develops into full-blown references to the glamorous, campy, and unintentionally (or is it?) erotic visual language of professional wrestling, playfully celebrating both its bravado and its predilection for skin-on-skin contact. Singlets hug the body in all the right ways as they peek out of sheer shorts, while the lace-up details of luchador regalia are pushed to S&M extremes.
This aspect of bodacious theatricality extends to the runway show’s staging at Milan’s historic Teatro Lirico Giorgio Gaber. As the iconic red velvet curtains raise, latex-clad figures dance in hanging cages to kick off the cabaret. Models emerge, transforming the theater’s stage and aisle into one runway. Fittingly, the heart-pumping soundtrack channels the sensual freak-funk of Lovesexy-era Prince, splicing together glam rock, soul, and sexy R&B to driving club beats.
Amplified by this sonic and visual backdrop, the Spring/Summer 2025 collection from Dsquared2 brings the heat as a soulful and unabashedly sexy celebration of the freedom to embrace multiplicity.
