The third version of Dover Street Market, the fashion retail concept developed by designer Rei Kawakubo, will be coming to New York this month.
A former school building on Lexington Avenue in the Kips Bay neighborhood is being transformed into a multi-brand store featuring merchandise from Miuccia Prada and Louis Vuitton.
Prada is building a permanent space on the top floor. Vuitton is creating a three-month pop-up store in the main entrance area.
The concept is the brainchild of Adrian Joffe, ceo of Comme des Garçons Intl., the Tokyo-based fashion label, and his wife, Kawakubo.
“For Dover Street Market New York, I wanted to keep the no-rule, beautiful chaos feeling of the first two Dover Street Markets,” said Kawakubo. “But in contrast to New York itself, I wanted to design it with extreme simplicity, unsophisticated, almost primitive and with naïve artlessness.”
The original Dover Street Market opened in London’s Mayfair section in 2004. A smaller one opened in Tokyo’s Ginza district last year.
The 18,000-square-foot building on Lexington Avenue and 30th Street was built in 1909 and once housed the New York School of Applied Design for Women.
The store will feature all 15 Comme des Garçons brands plus Prada, Yves Saint Laurent, Azzedine Alaïa, Thom Browne, Rick Owens, Sacai and Undercover.
It will also include space for new British designers Simone Rocha and J. W. Anderson, and a fourth floor “incubation” area – called the Energy Showroom – with small customized spaces for young designers like Gosha Rubchinskiy, Max Vanderwoude Gross, Lou Dalton, Phoebe English, Craig Green, Lee Roach and Sibling.