Big Apple bound for the holidays?
Dover Street Market is a must-see shopping destination
NEW YORK — I’m no stranger to New York City, or where to go to see its creme de la creme of couture and shopping.
I’ve swooned over extravagant window displays along Fifth Avenue, and marveled at the elegant finds inside Madison Avenue’s high-end boutiques. Downtown, I’ve sauntered along Soho’s cobblestone streets exploring designer boutiques nestled among lofts and artists’ galleries. Then there’s the Meatpacking District, home to sprawling storefronts by Diane von Furstenberg and Alice + Olivia, and, more recently, hubs of hundreds of shops inside malls steps away from the World Trade Center memorial.
But for those who are Big Apple bound to do some holiday shopping in the weeks ahead, one of New York’s latest and greatest retail experiences won’t be found in any of those spots.
Dover Street Market New York is a multilevel shopping concept situated unassumingly in a former school building (circa 1908) at Lexington Avenue and East 30th Street. It opened a couple of years ago, modeled after the original location in London. Others have opened in Tokyo, Singapore and Beijing. Earlier this year, the New York store expanded its fashionable footprint with the introduction of the Basement, a floor devoted to sought-after sneakers, hip streetwear and some selections from emerging designers.
It’s all from the mind of Rei Kawakubo, the Japanese fashion designer behind the label Comme des Garcons (which means “like boys” in French). Her avantgarde creations were the subject of The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute’s spring 2017 exhibition, making her only the second living designer to be featured in a solo show at The Met.
The best way to describe this hodgepodge of a store is part high-end shopping, part art museum, part trendy eatery. Ms. Kawakubo calls it “beautiful chaos.” And, on second thought, perhaps the modest exterior does make sense to house this anything-but-modest retailer; the store itself is an experiment in curating brands with aesthetics that might not typically go