Designers often go back to their roots for inspiration. But the roots aspect of their own formative past that designer twin brothers Dan and Dean Caten explored for their Spring 2013 campaign for Dsquared2 is a little more personal—and far more glamorous—than the usual wistful backward glance. Dan and Dean, now 48, have been making scenes since their youth in the Toronto suburb of Willowdale. During their dress-up period in the early '90s, floating around the French and Italian Rivieras, the Catens regularly transformed into fantastic femme fatales of nightlife, blending their innate taste and knowledge of fashion with their love of a good time. "We were designers in Canada, but at that time, we were trying to become designers in Italy," Dan remembers. "It wasn't as easy as we thought. We weren't working as much as we wanted, so dressing up was our best way to earn money and be fabulous and have a creative release." In the process, the brothers created a roster of twinning female characters, big on makeup, wigs, and over-the-top apparel, that would serve as personalities or "images" at parties and clubs.
