Dean and Dan: We are constantly on the road and are major gypsies. We're both Sagittarians and we are so not homebodies. We're born to travel. We share the same birthday as Christina Aguilera - she's a real doll - and we're pretty much extroverts who are rarely home. Our brand has become increasingly popular and we launched our women's wear collection two years ago. Things have become increasingly hectic for us and our work has pretty much doubled ever since. We go to New York four to five times a year, we visit our hometown Toronto twice a year and we go to Paris and London for work all the time. Last year, we went to Japan, Dubai, Morocco, Greece, Spain, Hawaii and we went to St. Tropez for Naomi's [Campbell] birthday.
We moved to Milan 12 years ago and have regarded the city as our home ever since. Our father is Italian and our mother is English so there's a bit of Italian in us. We love all things Italian: the food, the people and we speak the language fluently. A lot of people have asked us why we didn't base ourselves in New York when we started our menswear range in 1995. I think we wanted to give ourselves a bit of a challenge. We've had a pretty rough life; our mum left us when we were six months old, and life's always been challenging. Moving to New York would have been too easy for us because it was just a bus ride away from home. We wanted something more demanding and so we chose Milan.
Dan: On a usual work day I get up at about 8.30am when our assistant Federica - who's German and we absolutely adore - smacks my ass and gets me up with coffee. She's more like a mum to us and has been with us for eight years. We used to live together in a house and it was like Three's Company. We travel together as well. I live in the countryside with my partner but I still see Dean every day and I call him every morning when I get up. I head down to the bar for a coffee with my partner before he goes to work. We live outside Milan in the countryside so our neighbourhood is really beautiful, with old bread shops and flower shops. I drive to the studio after breakfast - it's a 25-minute drive - and meet my brother in the studio.
Dean: I get up at about 10.30 and usually the bar near my flat delivers my coffee and a brioche. My flat is literally spitting distance from our studio near Casa de la Fontana, right in the heart of Milan. It's a gorgeous pad that was once owned by Mussolini so the decor is very masculine. It has a nice terrace and a big kitchen (though I never cook). Unfortunately the lease is up and I'm getting kicked out by my landlord pretty soon. It's a pain to find another flat considering I have so little spare time. After breakfast I meet my brother in the studio.
Dean and Dan: There are five people in the studio and we work with a very small team. We have two press people, one secretary and two other assistants and we work like a family. In fact, it feels like our assistants are our bosses sometimes. We do mostly fittings and things in the studio. We have our designs made to our own size so we can do our own fittings. If the outfit works then we scale up the sizes. I do the fittings for women's wear too sometimes - we're about a size 42. We're pretty intuitive as to what we think works and what doesn't. People ask how we reconcile our design differences but we never have any problems with things like that. If either of us is in doubt about a design we take it off [the collection]; we only makes things we both agree on. We change a tonne of stuff in the studio and we're good with our scissors. It's actually a lot more challenging to do the menswear collection than women's wear because there are more sartorial options for women, whereas menswear is quite limiting. It's always a challenge to make cool things that don't look ridiculous. It's an intimate environment in the studio, and for lunch, which is at 1pm or 2pm, we'll open a bottle of wine.
When we're not in the studio we're in the factory, which is a two-and-half-hour drive from central Milan. A lot of time is spent in the car but it's great because we have a convertible and we get tans during the summer when the weather is gorgeous.