There has been much discussion around which fashion brand would be the first to snag one of the stars of Heated Rivalry, the Canadian-produced gay bromance drama – with some incidental hockey-ing – that has become a bonafide cultural sensation in the past six weeks or so. A Gen-Z coded, homoerotically-loaded take on winter sports sounds right up Dean and Dan Caten’s street. And they’re Canadian, to (snow) boot. So it was apt that they pipped everyone else to the post and had Hudson Williams – AKA Shane Hollander, owner of that much-mentioned cottage that’s already begun to grate on everyone’s nerves – open their Autumn/Winter 2026 Dsquared2 show.
As soon as you saw the faux-snow slalomed catwalk beforehand, you kind of knew what was on the cards. Or at least knew it wasn’t going to be some treatise about practical winter outerwear. Although, granted, there were plenty of knits, and down jackets, and double-layered cargo jean hybrid things that nodded to the theme, as well as puffed nylon trapper hats and some giant coats and collars in thick shearling. Those looks have always been part of the Dsquared2 canon for three decades – they were remixed this time, sweater knit with intarsias of snowboarders, or medals (gold, duh), or the number 64 – which wasn’t a five-year shy typo, rather the year the design duo were born.
Along with those typical Dsquared2 clothes were the typical Dsquared2, well, unclothes – bared midriffs and acres of legs for her and stripped, muscled torsos for him, in a sly, sexy take on snowbunnies. Patagonia meets Playgirl. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out something to rhyme with puck, after all – but there was a wit here also twisted into the clothes. It was there in a bunch of boys freezing various extremities off in long-john underwear-as-outerwear, in actual outerwear ‘frosted’ with ice crystals of bling, and in the vast scale of those trapper hats. Especially fun was a sequence of puff-sleeved and skirted eveningwear composed of strapped-up puffer jackets and body armour that looked as if Emanuel Ungaro made a spur-of-the-moment decision to both craft and stage a 1988 couture show at that year’s Winter Olympics. Which, as it happens, were held in Calgary, Canada. A neat tie-in, if ever there was. It was also truly an Olympic feat to see models navigating a flight of stairs (they only looked like they were made of ice, but still) in heel-less, strapped-up boots that could-woulda-shoulda had some kind of relationship to winter sports. They were fabulous, nonetheless.
Speaking of those games, this year’s are set to take place in the mountains just outside of Milan come February – the city is revved up (and booked up) for the occasion. So, honestly, the climate was perfect for the Caten’s light-hearted and warm-blooded take on not-so-classic winter wears.
