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After 12 years of residing at it’s namesake home, the Dover Street Market hops across town to the Haymarket and features five floors transformed into a sprawling pastiche of abutting and stacked scenes.
When renowned fashion designer-turned-Comme des Garçons founder-slash-creative director Rei Kawakubo finds another hat to put on, notice will surely be taken. Kawakubo unleashed a wave of creativity for a series of one-off interiors for the Haymarket location alongside a sampling of spaces designed especially for fashion brands, for example Rick Owens designed his namesake brand’s scenery and J.W. Anderson’s sector emulates a children’s playground in the founder’s Northern Ireland home. The Comme des Garçons director tailored displays which host the various branches of Comme des Garçons as well as the common areas such as changing rooms, cashiers and the perfume area among others.
Each level aligns with a theme, with the Kawakubo-conceived Iconic Dover Street Hut welcoming customers at the entry level, a gold-plated first floor, a second floor with a ‘Metal Dinosaur’ and black and white cut-out shapes filling the third. Customers descend into the basement for a take on Frankenstein courtesy of Catherine Wagner.
The scheme is a continuation of DSM’s bespoke beginnings. In Kawakubo’s own words: ‘I want to create a kind of market where various creators from various fields gather together and encounter each other in an ongoing atmosphere of beautiful chaos; the mixing up and coming together of different kindred souls who all share a strong personal vision.’
With its stately structure untouched, the Haymarket building – renowned as being the former headquarters of Burberry – becomes a 3000-sq-m canvas for Kawakubo’s curation of brands which are presented amid a potpourri of brand exclusive shop-in-shops.
Spaces which have been graced by the hand of Kawakubo include Comme des Garçons, Comme des Garçons Comme des Garçons, Comme des Garçons GIRL, Comme des Garçons Homme Plus, Comme des Garçons Homme Deux, Comme des Garçons SHIRT, Black Comme des Garçons, Junya Watanabe, Junya Watanabe Man, and Noir Kei Ninomiya (Enjoy our Q&A with Kei Ninomiya for the launch of S/S 2015 collection).
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