Retail Directory 2011

IT Beijing Market

Beijing

The fashion partnership between Comme des Garçons and its Chinese franchise partner, the IT Group, is a pairing made in sartorial heaven – no doubt helped by the fact that Rei Kawakubo’s trendsetting firm was one of the first to recognise the enormous appetite of the Chinese for branded fashion. The new flagship, IT Beijing Market, is a riff on London’s Dover Street Market, but, this being China, on a much larger scale. Sheathed in a glass cube featuring Kawakubo’s trademark giant polka dots, the four-storey building is located in the swish Sanlitun Village retail complex. Save for quirky touches such as a life-sized elephant and a giant pelican, the all-white interiors are purposefully bare of details, making them the ideal canvas for the Comme des Garçons labels and specially curated clothes by Ann Demeulemeester, Yves Saint Laurent and A Bathing Ape.

Photography: Tony Law

N5, Village North, No 11 Sanlitun Road, Chaoyang District, Beijing
Tel: 86.10 6416 4380
www.sanlitunvillage.com