Dover Street Market is about to inaugurate its flagship store in Paris, the eighth DSM branch worldwide. The new store will open on May 24 in the hôtel de Coulanges, a historic building at 35-37 rue des Francs-Bourgeois, in the Marais district. After staging several retail initiatives in Paris, the renowned fashion retailer by Rei Kawakubo and Adrian Joffe is setting up shop in a building erected between 1627 and 1634, the residence of, among others, the marquise de Sévigné. It will be DSM’s first concept store in the French capital, as first reported by FashionNetwork.com last month.

 
The new avant-garde store, called DSMP (Dover Street Market Paris), is the brainchild of Rei Kawakubo, who designed all its interiors, including the Rose Bakery café, with a disruptive spirit. She was keen for the store to embody the “beautiful chaos” typical of DSM since its inception. For a start, no garment or product is visible from the outside of the store. Visitors have to enter the premises to discover the items on sale, displayed across a succession of spaces all different from one another, each featuring unexpected shapes, as though the place was an endless labyrinth.
 
Some of the white walls assume a curved shape, showcasing clothes and accessories by some 50 labels on metallic racks and sculptural display cases with a futuristic vibe. The labels “will change constantly,” said DSM in a press release, indicating that “there will no sections or concessions dedicated to specific brands.”

For its opening, DSMP will feature a large selection including renowned labels like Prada, Bottega Veneta, Balenciaga, Jacquemus, Rick Owens and Walter Van Beirendonck, Japanese names like Comme des Garçons of course, alongside Junya Watanabe, Noir Kei Ninomiya, Undercover, Sacai, and Doublet, new labels making their mark on the fashion scene like Marine Serre, Martine Rose, Wales Bonner, JW Anderson, Simone Rocha, and more, and emerging designer brands like Hed Mayner, Alain Paul, Pauline Dujancourt, Craig Green, and others.
 

DSMP will sell footwear by Nike, Adidas, Asics, Hoka, Salomon, Converse, New Balance, Reebok, Phileo, and Vans, alongside a series of labels for which DSM holds an exclusive in France, among them Hodakova, Paul Harnden, Elena Dawson, Johanna Parv, Chopova Lowena, Duran Lantink, Independantes de Coeur, and Ponte, as well as several collections created exclusively for DSMP, for example by Matty Bovan and Charles Jeffrey.
  
The building has been given a comprehensive overhaul. The retail space extends across 1,100 square metres on three levels (ground floor, first floor and a basement), while the second to fourth floors are home to DSMP Brand Development, the division tasked with distributing and bolstering the growth of some 15 emerging labels. Another two basement levels will host “artistic, literary, musical and community events.”

In the press release, DSMP concluded by stating that “we are also planning to invite artists to take over the store with their exhibitions and perspectives, in the creative spirit that characterised Association 3537, the organisation that occupied the building in the last three years.”