Opened in London in 2004, the Dover Street Market surprised shoppers right off the bat with its selection of unpretentious luxury pieces mixed with the work of a few unknown designers. “In the beginning, we approached four people: Hedi [Slimane], Raf [Simons], Alber [Elbaz], and Azzedine [Alaïa],” recalls Adrian Joffe. The four all accepted to create pieces exclusively for the store’s launch. Ever since, Dover Street Market has established itself as the natural home of avant-garde, experimentation, but first and foremost an on-point selection of collections from brands that need no introduction. A temple of fashion that’s both liberated and super-specialized, Dover Street Market is also exceptional in that it presents and composes different universes in a precise and different way. Under the auspices of Rei Kawakubo, designer for Comme des Garçons and emblematic queen of avant-garde, the Dover Street Market is designed like an upscale space that’s overflowing with creativity. Conceptualized by the idea of ‘beautiful chaos’, the store never ceases to attract professionals and fans alike.
With her husband Adrian Joffe, Rei Kawakubo imagined Dover Street Market like a store-cum-art gallery. For the first time, a store took into consideration ideas of environmental conservation, which was rarely done before. It also gave sneakers and other accessories a new status as works of art by presenting them like never before. Dover Street Market would soon become a privileged shopping experience – an antidote to conformism and shopping mall culture. Their approach is more than spontaneous, intuitive, and creative. “In Japan, Burberry recently opened a flagship store for millions of dollars,” Rei Kawakubo pointed out in 2004. “It would be the antithesis of that. Luckily we don’t have a lot of money, so we can’t go overboard. We have to find an idea that doesn’t cost too much.” This deliberately anti-luxury manifesto would soon spread from Tokyo to New York.
Dover Street Market refuses to answer to the demands of industrialized fashion, forced to forget the past, pulled towards novelty. That’s why, in 2014, Prada introduced their famous 2008 collection exclusively for Dover Street Market. In 2016, the store got a makeover. With five stories and 3,000 m2 of Burberry’s old headquarters – the very same inaugurated by Thomas Burberry in 1912 – luxury brands and young labels come together here. Gosha Rubchinskiy and Dior, Loewe and Vetements, Gucci and Jacquemus, these universes all collide into dialogue.
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