Fresh from their win at the British Fashion Awards, where they received the Isabella Blow prize for Fashion Creators, Mert & Marcus have a new project. They’ve joined forces with Dean and Dan Caten, the founding brothers of Dsquared2, to create Mert & Marcus 1994 x Dsquared2 – a limited edition offering of pieces that blur the line between fashion and art.
“We met Mert and Marcus on the set of our AW05 advertising campaign and we hit it off straight away,” explain the Catens. “The relationship quickly evolved into a great friendship, and one night the four of us were having dinner and it just came to us: why not work on a project showcasing their iconic images?”
Pieces are finished with photographs from Mert & Marcus’s archive – look closely and you might recognise a few faces within them (Kate Moss is definitely in there). With boiler suits, wide-legged trousers, bombers, and boxy tailoring crafted from unexpected materials like laminated paper and rubberised cotton, all in all, it’s “a few cool clothes, for a few cool kids”, surmise the brothers.
“The 90s are so inspirational and important to us,” says Dean. “It was a time when music, art, and fashion all seemed to be liberating itself from the conventional norm. But 1994 particularly was a really special time – it was the year we created and presented the first DSquared2 collection in Paris.” It was also the year Mert & Marcus met. Cute!
The collection will launch in February.