Dover Street Market, Ginza.

In 2004, Rei Kawakubo, the genius behind the Japanese brand Comme des Garçons, introduced a new retail concept to London. Dover Street Market, named for its location in London’s tony Mayfair neighborhood, is a mash-up of market, department store and museum. Individual concessions handpicked by Kawakubo, which run the gamut from luxury labels like Lanvin and Azzedine Alaïa to the utilitarian wares of Labour & Wait and the edible goods of Rose Bakery, share space with art and design installations and the multiple labels in the Comme des Garçons fashion family. On the 12th of March of this year, Kawakubo opened Dover Street Market in Tokyo, doubling its size and placing it squarely in the center of Ginza, the city’s shopping mecca, where venerable department stores, luxury boutiques and the supersize flagship stores of brands like Uniqlo line the streets. 

Like its sister store in London, Dover Street Market Ginza (DSMG) hews to Kawakubo’s notion of “beautiful chaos.” "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."


Dover Street Market is scheduled to open in New York in 2013.