Dover Street Market Ginza, Tokyo

Coudamy Design's 'Bear Cave' ceiling looms over the menswear section, featuring collections by Raf Simons, Damir Doma and House of Billiam

(Image credit: press)

We knew it was only a matter of time, but we never expected to wait this long. An epic eight years since transforming London’s avant-garde fashion landscape with anti-department store Dover Street Market, founder Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garçons has finally imported the concept to her hometown of Tokyo. Six storeys of glass and steel prop up more than 60 fashion labels in a former office building in upmarket Ginza.

Unsurprisingly for this most hands-on of designers, Kawakubo took on the transformation herself, adding a monochrome pillar motif to the framework and carving out intriguing whitewashed niches for her fashion tenants. Her own labels, the entire stable of Comme lines, including Beatles, Homme and Pocket Comme des Garcons, get a variety of custom displays: giant metal spirals and arches and imaginative wood vitrines that envelop the merchandise.

Elsewhere, Kawakubo has given her fashion collaborators – from Alexanders Wang and McQueen to Celine and YSL - full artistic freedom. Japanese brand Visvim hired British set designer Andy Hillman to imagine its space with a patchwork wall mural and a giant fallen rose. Cultish New York menswear designer Adam Kimmel, charged with his first-ever standalone concession, commissioned a series of neon canvases by artist Dan Attoe. Streetwear brand A Bathing Ape went with Tokyo interiors mavericks Wonderwall.

Considerably larger than the London location at 1,300 sq m, DSM Ginza is what its author describes as ‘beautiful chaos’. Some long-loved London-born themes are reimagined Ginza style, like the changing-room ‘hut’, interpreted here in corrugated metal and wood, its primary-colour paint seeming to fade and rust. As in London, no distinction is made between luxury and streetwear brands – it all collides in delicious anarchy, much as it would on a frantic Ginza street.

Kawakubo treats the space like a multi-tiered sculpture garden, curating each floor with works by Coudamy Design from France and Vancouver’s Patkau Architects. Fashion designers with an itch to scratch get a dedicated event space on the ground floor to toy with. Vuitton menswear designer Kim Jones, along with sculptor Alistair Mackie, took up the inaugural task and directed a Masai-themed scene, featuring a life-sized plaster elephant by Stephanie Quayle and Vuitton’s Africa-inspired Spring/Summer 2012 collection.

The building’s winning feature, however, is a recurring installation by sculptor Kohei Nawa of Kyoto. Kawakubo, eager to obscure the ‘intrusive’ escalator bays on each floor, commissioned Nawa’s wall of giant spindles. They cut across the thrust of each escalator like arrows, directing energy up through the building. Not surpringly, Nawa has called it ‘Pulse’.

The 'Bear Cave' from the perspective of the A Bathing Ape concession, designed by Wonderwall.

British artist Stephanie Quayle sculpted the white elephant for Louis Vuitton's event space, curated by Kim Jones and Alastair Mackie

The traditional Dover Street hut, Ginza style

On each floor, an installation called 'Pulse' by Kyoto artist Kohei Nawa distracts visitors from the imposing escalators

The C&eacute;line concession, designed by Rei Kawakubo — The Céline concession, designed by Rei Kawakubo with thick pale-pink walls

The Junya Watanabe Man space, featuring a sculpture by British artist Graham Hudson

A giant rose by UK artist Andy Hillman and a mural for Japanese label Visvim

Fashion from Michael Samuels, Comme des Garcons Homme Deux, Nike box and CDG Homme

The Beatles Comme des Garcons concession

The spiritual heart of Dover Street Market Ginza is this spiralling installation for Comme des Garçons, featuring one of Nawa's giant spindles at the centre

Undercover's Gyakuso collection (left), Nike footwear (centre) and a vending machine, which dispenses Dover Street Market T-shirts (right)

In front of the Sacai concession is a steel shelter by Vancouver-based Patkau architects

The Pocket Comme des Garcons concession on the fourth floor, with its aluminium arches

Adam Kimmel&rsquo;s first ever stand-alone shop — Adam Kimmel’s first ever stand-alone shop features a neon installation by Dan Attoe

On the sixth floor, scenes from &lsquo;Wasp Factory — On the sixth floor, scenes from ‘Wasp Factory’ by British artist/set designer Michael Howells

Howells' &lsquo;Wasp Factory&rsquo; — Howells' ‘Wasp Factory’

Black Peanuts products in the event space

The new men's collection by Kim Jones at Louis Vuitton

ADDRESS

Dover Street Market Ginza
Comme des Garçon
Ginza Komatsu West
6-9-5, Ginza
Chuo-ku, Tokyo
104-0061, Japan

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Based in London, Ellen Himelfarb travels widely for her reports on architecture and design. Her words appear in The Times, The Telegraph, The World of Interiors, and The Globe and Mail in her native Canada. She has worked with Wallpaper* since 2006.