Dover Street Market Paris Is Ready for Shoppers to Embrace “A New Chaos”

It’s a tumultuous time in the retail landscape. E-commerce giants are struggling (when they’re not shutting down altogether), while traditional department stores continue to grapple with the challenges of a digital-first, social media-driven customer base. In the midst of this, Dover Street Market, the concept shop founded by Comme des Garçons designer Rei Kawakubo, has always offered an alternative—a shopping experience grounded in discovery and driven by the experimental. It’s a place to interact with brands you’ve never heard of and reacquaint yourself with brands you’ve always coveted. Dover Street offers a place so far beyond any regular shop. It’s more of a gallery, an approachable, playful space to wander and get lost.

And now, the retailer has opened its much-anticipated branch in Paris. Built inside a 17th-century mansion in the Marais, which was up until recently used as a cultural center, the space is grand but not too imposing. Walking off the busy Rue de Francs-Bourgeois and into the quiet center courtyard feels like being transported to another time—a romantic setting for a lively period drama that’s way cooler than Bridgerton. The space, largely untouched during the building process, is divided into three areas: two for the shopping, one for the Rose Bakery cafe, with a stairwell leading to the basement housing an exhibition space.

Dover Street Market Paris was designed and curated entirely by Kawakubo, which is a first. In the previous locations in London, New York, L.A., Tokyo, Beijing, and Singapore, brands were given spaces to curate themselves; various architects also helped. Kawakubo’s direction for the Paris shop, like everything the prolific designer does, was hyper-specific. You can see, hear, and feel her taste everywhere: in the juxtaposition of French classic and modern contemporary, the balancing of hard and soft surfaces, and the serene, galactic music—a far cry from the thumping techno or upbeat tunes played at the other Dover Streets.

Kawakubo wanted the windows to be free of merchandise, and designed the clothing displays in rounded, curved forms so that there were no corners and nothing touched the walls. For the first time, there are no brand-specific spaces: clothing and accessories from designers like Junya Watanabe, Prada, Bottega Veneta, Martine Rose and Willy Chavarria are mixed intentionally. Exclusive brands to the French market include Chopova Loewna, All-In, Torisheju, and more.

As Joffe explains, “The result is a ‘New Chaos,’ whereby the spaces assert themselves instead of the brands, where everyone is mixed in with each other, without preconceived ideas nor compartmentalization, and where the clothes thereby find a new voice, interlacing, interacting and interfering with each other to create unexpected conversations and neighborly synergies.”

A separate basement houses more retail, along with special fashion-focused exhibitions. Currently on view is a series of photographs titled “Comme des Garcons for and by Paolo Roversi,” curated with the help of editor, gallerist, and 10 Corso Como founder Carla Sozzani, who worked on the concept alongside the president of the company, Adrian Joffe (he’s also Kawakubo’s partner.) There is also a special installation curated by the British designer Matty Bovan. The top three floors house Dover Street’s Brand Development division, which is an incubator space that helps empower and enrich emerging brands from around the world.

The overall idea is to foster community—something that can’t really be done online. “E-commerce has been and is a wonderful service, but it cannot substitute emotions,” Sozzani says. “Dover Street Market Paris is creating a community of people who like to meet, share ideas, exchange opinions, and talk, smile (or not) to each other.”

She adds, “[It’s a] wonderful feeling to gather together where so many different things happen in a single place, from art and photography to fashion and design, to music and cuisine and nature. It’s life.”

Below, take a look inside the new Dover Street Market Paris.