Comme des Garcons x Dover Street Market: How It All Began
You enter a location and don’t remember the name of that location. So when you purchase a product you walk away and it’s history. Then there’s a Dover Street Market. Changes are felt as one enters into the entrance ways. There are no instructions or instructions describing the direction in which to go. No tidy shelves crowding you to purchase something. It’s okay if you see a $50 graphic t-shirt, a $1000 coat and then a couple of feet away from the subject. You wander. You discover. It takes longer than expected. However, in the middle of all of this is NOT shopping. It’s another thing altogether. He is the brains behind Comme des Garcons. But that’s what makes this story even more unique in fashion history, than the others.
Rei Kawakubo and Comme des Garcons: The Origin of Rebellion
Rei Kawakubo was born in Japan, Tokyo in 1942. Of course, she doesn’t have any fashion school and no fashion education. There she was employed in the textile factory and could not find the clothes she wanted on the racks, and thus she began to love making clothes for her first job in advertising. That came out of frustration, and transformed into Comme des Garçons, a song by Françoise Hardy “like boys. She took her name as a rebellious name, she wanted it.
Established as a company in 1973. In 1975 she opened her first Tokyo boutique. By the early 1980s she had 150 stores throughout Japan, and was bringing in roughly $30 million every year. When she was discovered in 1981 by the fashion world at Paris Fashion Week, it was all she could do not to be flummoxed. It was an experience never before encountered by any French critic. British, dark, deconstructed, asymmetrical and defying all notions of beauty was the fashion style. It was disturbing, some said. She kept going.
The brand continued to have a greater influence over the years. The company is going to experience a turnover of $ 450 million in the year 2024 and $ 130 million in 1999. As far as growth is concerned, it is executed outside of the tide and/or trend. For 2017, the Metropolitan honoured the entire exhibit with Kawakubo, making her the second living designer to be featured in the Costume Institute’s exhibit. She was able to establish one of the fashion empires without giving about the look of an empire.
Dover Street Market: The Store That Became a Cultural Institution
Rei Kawakubo and her husband Adrian Joffe opened Dover Street Market at 17-18 Dover Street, London’s Mayfair on 10th September 2004. Joffe is an interesting character, to say the least. He was born in South Africa, studied Zen in the UK and worked and toured the world including Japan where he met and married Kawakubo and became president of Comme des Garcons International in 1993. He merged an uncompromising creative vision with a thriving global business, all while keeping his soul intact.
It’s an inspiration of Kensington Market, which was a fashion centre in London but is now inactive and closed in 2000. They loved its raw, layered and spontaneous life and they felt a desire to represent it for today, they saw. When the half opened a fifth of the shop was set up for Comme des Garcons’ 12 lines, some of which were new to the UK. The rest was up to the designers, such as Azzedine Alaïa, Raf Simons and Undercover. Standard fixtures, and standard display cases were not present. Artworks made from clothing racks, exposed ceiling and concrete walls. It was “beautiful chaos” in 2004, Kawakubo said. It was no marketing hokum. And It was indeed!
It won the best store in the world award from the international magazine, Vogue in 2007. In 2013 it was the 2nd most powerful brand in the world, according to Complex. Dover Street Market now has eight stores throughout London, Tokyo, New York, Los Angeles, Singapore, Beijing and Paris. Perhaps it is the boldest of all, and the first to open in the 17th century mansion in Le Marais, Paris, in May 2024. Not able to see through the windows as to what the people are wearing. It was created to make it unobtrusive to the street by Kawakubo. Should be observed from walking distance. In 1998, Comme des Garcons began to sell its business to Dover Street Market and the brand now represents 30-35% of what goes on at Dover Street Market.
One Vision, One Universe: Why This Is Not a Normal Collaboration
There’s a formula that most combinations of fashion follow. Brands gather around a table, they form a concept and they go their separate ways, going back to their mass-producers, and the idea remains confined within a bubble. That’s not the case at Comme des Garcons and Dover Street Market, however. Rei Kawakubo was not involved with Dover Street Market. She built it. The brand and the shop are one and the same, and are of the same ideology.
Since its inception, Dover Street Market is one of the first to have been opened at Comme des Garcons. Whether it’s on exclusive drop, limited releases or collectors lining up before sunrise, it all goes through the veins of Dover Street Market. This is the brain of the store that got this brand to be successful. Pieces here are released which don’t exist anywhere else on Earth. The laps provide that kind of energy which most brands want to replicate. Long lines outside prior to opening. Products going fast.Items which are sold out quickly. CDG x Dover Street Market items, such as those from Grailed and StockX are seeing auctions for two to five times their retail price.
Designed by Filip Pagowski in 1999, CDG PLAY’s logo with the heart shape is a worldwide streetwear symbol to a great extent as a result of the years and positioning. Comments from Comme des Garcons: In 2019, Dover Street Market organized its biggest collaboration so far – MONOCHROMARKET – featuring 60 brands all creating a monochromatic black and white capsule collection. For its 20th anniversary, over 80 special partnerships have visited the store in December 2024, such as Nike, Stone Island, Levi’s and Rick Owens. But all this was during Comme des Garcons’ time.
The Drops, The Pieces, The Obsession
It has produced such an unforgettable series of works that is one factor to this link. These aren’t just any old garments! It is at these times that the collector will recall where he/she obtained them.
The CDG PLAY exclusive tees and hoodies with the logo of a heart have been sold exclusively at Dover Street Market, and are now one of the most recognizable logos in fashion today. The projects on the sneakers were one-off projects. Comme des Garcons x Nike, Comme des Garcons Homme x New Balance, Comme des Garcons x Salomon, Comme des Garcons x Converse. All of them were brought in via Dover Street Market. It is a few brands that would boast of all their sales in a year, but they all sold out with the sales.
In 2009, Rei Kawakubo created a perfume, called Dover Street Market. She has made up the design of the bottle. The first fragrances started with an incense and mandarin, pepper and bergamot, juniper berries and finished with patchouli, pine and cedar. It certainly had a similar fragrance to the shop and was one of the most demurely loved fragrances in the whole Comme des Garcons collection. In 2020, the BLACK Comme des Garcons line made its debut online, via Dover Street Market, enabling collectors everywhere to buy pieces that were previously only available at physical stores. In 2025, Comme des Garcons Shirt, in collaboration with the A$AP Nast musician, designed and created new versions of Comme des Garcons SHIRT for all Dover Street Market stores worldwide, inspired by the original Comme des Garcons SHIRT designs from the Collection.
What Comme des Garcons x Dover Street Market Taught the Fashion World
In the days of every heritage fashion house desperately trying to get a sneaker brand involved, let alone ‘drop culture’ having a name attached, luxury streetwear was a thing long before.Long before luxury streetwear was even a thing, long before every heritage fashion house was toying with a sneaker brand, even long before ‘drop culture’ had a name yet, Comme des Garcons and Dover Street Market were playing it out! The rules were not being followed. They authored the playbook which everyone later borrowed.
It wasn’t a typical concept in 2004 to see one on an upper floor, and a $50 graphic tee on a lower floor. Completely segregated by price, prestige and category, the department stores were maintained. Dover Street Market broke down these walls altogether and the fashion industry began to slowly move ahead the following 20 years.
The Tachiagari tradition made this even more vibrant! Dover Street Market closes for two days twice a year and then completely reopens with a fresh look. New installations, new layouts, new visual energy. Dover Street Market invites artists and gives them complete creative freedom. Each visit, you’ll discover new things here. Shopping is no longer simply a transaction, it’s a return.
Colette in Paris shut its doors in 2017 and Opening Ceremony in 2020, but Dover Street Market continued to expand. This store thrives in a world where physical retail has taken a severe hit, precisely because it never tried to match the convenience of an online store. It wasn’t competing by doing anything else, it was competing by being more alive. The three winners of the Isabella Blow Award Adrian Joffe, Rei Kawakubo from Japan, and Dickon Bowden from Dover Street Market had their legacy of innovation recognised and their ongoing support of emerging talent at the 2025 Fashion Awards.
The Next Chapter: Where This Story Is Going
The story of Comme des Garcons and Dover Street Market hasn’t ended. Noir Kei Ninomiya designer Kei Ninomiya has created a new in-house brand for Dover Street Market, simply named DSM. The store is coming up with an original brand for the first time, conscious of the same universe that Kawakubo has created.
Even the fashion industry marvels at the avant-garde approach in the Paris location. Instead of loading the area with nice, reliable luxury concessions, Joffe has invested heavily in independent brands and new designers, juxtaposing them with the Comme des Garcons line-up, and blending them together without hierarchy or separation. It opened its doors on the first day of May 2024 to date and has already taken in 2,500 visitors, making sales of 75,000 euros. The company also proposes to build 3537, a cultural events venue with no retail elements, on the same site as the Dover Street Market.
But at the core of it all, there is Rei Kawakubo, who still designs in an unpredictive manner. She only gives interviews very rarely. She lets the work speak for itself and the work has never ceased to speak.
It began in a Tokyo Atelier in 1969 and has grown into one of the most incredible creative environments ever created by fashion. But it’s not a story about fashion, as it seems. Freedom is the issue, it’s always been that way. Being able to create as you go: not having to follow a blueprint; to make them feel something real every single time they walk through the door.
This is how it all started. And it continues to go strong.
