MILAN, September 29, 2006 -- Dean and Dan Caten love a production. This season, it was a seaside piazza complete with waiters serving drinks to pretty boys who watched their carinas strut up and down a boardwalk strewn with fishing net. The Capri backdrop was an apt setting for a bright and bouncy collection of Dsquared's louche preppy standbys, infused this time with a vaguely nautical air. There were navy blazers with brass buttons, ticking-stripe button-downs turned into minidresses, and wide-leg trousers, along with weekend bags of gigantic proportions. The best of these was a cheeky camel leather tote with the Dsquared logo in script near the bottom.
Cheeky, in fact, was the right word for this show, which featured skirts and dresses so abbreviated they barely earned the name. The black lace decorating a khaki suit was more subtly suggestive, but slinky jewel-tone jersey maillots, halter dresses, and a show-closing strappy gown fell squarely into the overtly sexy category. In truth, they looked a little flimsy, but there were also more solid Dsquared signatures like shrunken jackets, cuffed shorts, and denim, which was shown with their first-ever flat, a patent-leather penny loafer. The Canadian twins didn't add much to this season's fashion conversation, but they did provide a half-hour's pleasant diversion—who doesn't fantasize about a summer weekend in Capri?—and sometimes that's enough.
