Review of Dsquared2 Fall 2025 Ad Campaign by Creative Director Dean & Dan Caten, Giovanni Bianco with Photographer Mert Alas & Marcus Piggott with models Irina Shayk, Alex Consani, Achol Ayor, Rylea Beth, Dolly Baby, Louis Baines, Caesar Van Den Idsert, Nico Charlent, Clement Varin, Brian Whitby, Victor Perez, Ilias Loopmans & Daniel Legzdiņš
There are brands that flirt with nightlife, and then there is Dsquared2 — a house that has made the dance floor its cathedral. For Fall 2025, creative directors Dean and Dan Caten, alongside longtime collaborator Giovanni Bianco, hand the reins of direction to Mert & Marcus, who transform the campaign into a gritty black-and-white fever dream. It opens, as all great nights do, with a promise: a bare leg stepping from a limousine, a stolen kiss in a crowded room, and the shimmer of crystals set against denim. Thirty years on, Dsquared2 still knows how to tell a story where glamour and grit lock lips until dawn.
The campaign’s imagery is arrestingly straightforward — a documentary-style lens that captures Irina Shayk, Alex Consani, Victor Perez, and a diverse ensemble cast mid-revelry. What emerges is less a staged tableau than an invitation into the glorious chaos of an endless party: sweat, neon, bathrooms scrawled with graffiti, and the fleeting tenderness of connections formed under strobe lights. The choice of black-and-white heightens the drama, stripping away excess to leave us with raw texture, body language, and the pulse of nightlife distilled into something timeless. It feels lived-in, unpolished in the most intentional of ways.
Where some brands use anniversaries to look backward, Dsquared2 insists on staying in the now. The campaign celebrates 30 years not through retrospection, but by amplifying the same raw energy that has defined the house since its inception. There’s a certain genius in refusing to romanticize the past — instead, the Catens remind us that the Dsquared2 ethos has always been to party in the present tense. In this way, the campaign succeeds both as homage and manifesto.
That said, the line between spontaneity and strategy is a delicate one. While the documentary approach gives the campaign an appealing immediacy, there’s the occasional sense of déjà vu; Dsquared2 has mined the nightlife aesthetic often, and a touch of visual reinvention — even within the familiar framework of black-and-white debauchery — could have pushed this further into unexpected terrain. Still, the casting breathes freshness, and Haley Wollens’ styling, along with Sam Visser’s sharp makeup and Karim Belghiran’s undone-yet-polished hair, ensures the images never collapse into cliché.
What makes this campaign sing is its unapologetic celebration of the messy, sweaty, ecstatic moments that rarely make it into luxury fashion imagery. Dsquared2 leans into what it has always done best: collapsing the boundary between high fashion and the subversive world of the club. It’s fun, sexy, rock-and-roll, and entirely on brand.
After all, in Dsquared2’s world, the night never truly ends — it just changes outfits.
Dsquared2 Creative Directors | Dean & Dan Caten, Giovanni Bianco @ GB65
Directed by | Mert Alas & Marcus Piggott @ Art Partner
Photographer | Mert Alas & Marcus Piggott @ Art Partner
Models | Irina Shayk, Alex Consani, Achol Ayor, Rylea Beth, Dolly Baby, Louis Baines, Caesar Van Den Idsert, Nico Charlent, Clement Varin, Brian Whitby, Victor Perez, Ilias Loopmans, Daniel Legzdiņš
Stylist | Haley Wollens
Hair | Karim Belghiran @ Art Partner
Makeup | Sam Visser @ Art Partner
Manicurist | Jenny Longworth @ Streeters
Casting Director | Julia Lange @ Art Partner
Set Designer | Danny Hyland @ Streeters
Location | On set with Partner Films