“Go With the Chaos”: The Architects of Dover Street Market on Its Recipe for Radical Retail

“High fashion in a store reminiscent of a street market,” is how Rei Kawakubo first envisaged it. On September 10, 2004, the Comme des Garçons founder and her husband Adrian Joffe opened the first Dover Street Market (DSM) in London. Twenty-one years later, DSM has become a global organism, with outposts in Tokyo, Paris, New York, Los Angeles, Singapore and Beijing, each bearing the same spirit of “beautiful chaos” that informed its beginnings.

Tonight, that chaos will be momentarily corralled onstage at The Fashion Awards, presented by Pandora, in London. Kawakubo, Joffe and Dickon Bowden — who joined in 2004 as manager of the first store and is now vice president of the global enterprise — will jointly receive the Isabella Blow Award for Fashion Creator. In a period when much of the mul