Dover Street Market to open in LA
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Comme des Garçons’ Rei Kawakubo has announced that the latest Dover Street Market will be launched in Los Angeles, expected to open in March 2018.
In an exclusive interview with WWD, Adrian Joffe, Kawakubo’s husband and CEO of Comme des Garçons International and DSM said the decision to open in LA “just felt like the right time and the right place. This is not part of a five-year plan. You know us”. He added that the store was going to be designed by Kawakubo and “it’s going to look different.”
The 10,000 square foot building, currently no more than a warehouse building with an adjacent car park, is located in Downtown LA’s Arts District. The up and coming area is filled with similar stores such as 3.1 Phillip Lim, House of Woo and art gallery Hauser & Wirth.
The store location marks somewhat of a change for Kawakubo, who is known for placing stores in offbeat areas, sometimes influencing the future of the area with the arrival of DSM. Dover Street, London where the original store and name was born, once just a thoroughfare, is now a designer retail location home to brands such as Victoria Beckham and Jimmy Choo. The arrival of the first DSM in 2004 attracted upmarket consumers and brands followed, creating what is now a thriving fashion hub.
The LA store will offer a similar combination of Comme lines, streetwear and luxury brands - described by Kawakubo as a “beautiful chaos”. The new store however, will be a “new version” of DSM according to Joffe, which is known for its conceptual store feel - giving designers free reign over the creation of their collection areas.
The new branch will be three times smaller than the flagship London store, which relocated to Haymarket last year and stretches over three floors. Spanning just one floor, the LA branch brings an interesting change to the usual multi-storey store.
The news follows the opening of the fifth Dover Street Market in Singapore later this month, joining London, New York, Tokyo, and the partnership store I.T Market in Beijing.
Photo courtesy of Dover Street Market