Who the hell does Dover Street Market sell?
There's a lot of buzz around Dover Street Market being a department store unlike any other. With its latest location opening just recently in Paris, its interesting to question what makes DSM special.
Dover Street Market is Fashion’s most fashionable multi-brand wholesale store, with each of its worldwide locations posing slightly different creative approaches to its design and stock. At its core, it is a department store offering luxury items, but its items go through the hand-selection process by founders Rei Kawakubo and her husband slash business-parter Adrian Joffe. This means there’s something special in each of them. Dover Street Market opened its latest location in Paris, May 2024, advancing its core values and taking the shopping experience to a new level (for more details, you can read my article on ASVOF ;) ). Today, we are asking What’s the big idea? on the hype of Dover Street Market by looking at the brands present on the floorplan of its latest location.
Dover Street Market was founded by Rei Kawakubo and her husband Adrian Joffe, thus it’s only right for the store to be a primary stockist for their range of brands -Comme Des Garçons and all its diffusion lines. Each DSM location features a specially curated space, dubbed the “Pocket Shop” where the CDG Play collection is available. Discoverable throughout the floors and racks of the stores are all the other lines, current collaborations, and the ranges of Kawakubo’s Japanese proteges. For die-hard CDG lovers, Paris offers exclusive collaborations between CDG and designers close to Kawakubo such as Charles Jeffrey and Matty Bovan.
One design choice that makes DSM Paris unique from all other locations is that Kawakubo took full autonomy in designing the space given to each brand to present their collections. While the other DSM’s give freedom to imagine mini worlds around the clothing racks, in Paris, each brand is presented on an equal footing. This decision, coupled with the observation that other non-DSM multi-brand retailers have decreasing success rates, meant that many luxury Maisons opted out of sales through DSM. Even though they are very present in other locations, don’t expect to see Gucci, Loewe, The Row, Valentino, and Jean Paul Gaultier, perhaps for these reasons. Prada, Balenciaga, Miu Miu, and Bottega Veneta were open to this new egalitarian strategy and are still discoverable, although it may be harder than usual to spot them in the racks.
While traditional retail spaces, particularly those offering luxury goods, strictly adhere to sales as their prime function, DSM creates a communal feeling amongst its shoppers. This is obvious in its new exhibition and event spaces discoverable in the basement of the Paris location, but also in its international brand selection. By offering brands with cult-like followings, those otherwise exclusively online or unavailable in France, DSM becomes a magnet for fashion devotees. DSM acts as a salvation for the fashion-obsessed who are tired of the robotic process of endless scrolling, filtering brands, and receiving boxes in the mail. It attracts those who view clothes as celebrities in their own right and want to see their favorites in the flesh if only just to feel their materials and admire their construction. DSM speaks to a specific market of people, who want to know how Chopova Lowena’s skirts hold together, who know the difference between Marc Jacobs and Marc Jacobs Heaven, and who want their Paris souvenirs to be Our Legacy exclusives. The floor guide of the DSM website will hint to you what is to be discovered, but their stocks can only be viewed in person.
Adrian Joffe told VogueBusiness.com that DSM chooses its younger partners first based on liking the people behind the brand, and second on their potential. What makes the DSM model work so well is that they build symbiotic relationships with their partners, where both benefit from their transactions. DSM Paris is a spotlight for these emerging brands and designers, a number of whom were developed with the help of DSM’s private showrooms before the opening of the store. Explorable on the Fédération De La Haute Couture et De La Mode’s website under “Dover Street Market Paris” as early as 2020, are ERL, Liberal Youth Ministry, Honey Fucking Dijon, Rassvet, Youths in Balaclava, Vaquera and Weinsanto. Each comes from a different corner of the globe, and are now shoppable all in one place.
From the outside looking in, and every corner within the space, it is clear the Dover Street Market offers an unmatched shopping experience. It is easy to see why from the construction and atmosphere at first glance, but exploring the brands selected for retail reveals more about the goals of DSM. Bringing household-name luxury brands to equilibrium with emerging brands, reconnecting fashion lovers to a physical shopping experience, and spotlighting emerging brands are all outcomes made possible with their careful selection.
Links and References
https://www.doverstreetmarketparis.com/pages/floorguide
https://www.voguebusiness.com/story/consumers/there-are-no-rules-adrian-joffe-on-dover-street-market-paris-and-the-future-of-retail
https://www.fhcm.paris/en/news/dover-street-market-paris