Dover Street Market — Local services in London

Some of the best fashion design showroom in London central.

In March 2016, Dover Street Market moved from the eponymously named street in London’s Mayfair to Haymarket near Piccadilly Circus. If you’re not familiar with the area, just two minutes up the road is a branch of Tiger Tiger. Yet apart from literally the worst club in the world and Her Majesty’s Theatre (the long-term home of The Phantom of the Opera), there is little else around. In other words, this isn’t a part of town you’d expect to find a store that stocks some of the world’s most expensive and coveted brands. Think Vetements, Gucci, Dior, Gosha Rubchinski.

Founded in 2004 by Rei Kawakubo and Adrian Joffe of Comme des Garçons, the couple threw out the rulebook on what luxury stores should look like. Gone was the glow of warm, welcoming lighting; in its place an industrial aesthetic (think lots of concrete) and a place where the pair could sell their designs alongside those of their peers, nurturing and supporting emerging talent at the same time.

Kawakubo had two words for how she wanted the discombobulating shopping experience to feel: ‘beautiful chaos’. The phrase epitomises the visionary nature of DSM, a place where people from different worlds come together to shop side by side. A place where you’re as likely to find a Gucci handbag as Gosha Rubchinskiy fanboys queuing overnight to get their hands on the Russian designer’s latest Adidas collab.

Financially, however, DSM was a risk. The store took years to start paying off: “In the beginning, no-one understood it,” Joffe told the Financial Times last year. He credits a 2007 Vogue article, which called DSM ‘the best shop in the world’, as the catalyst for their change in fortune, but shoppers and industry experts alike recognised the brilliance of mixing luxury brands with the relatively unknown. “We always wanted both,” said Joffe. “We wanted that clash, that unexpected synergy that happens...

To think that a luxury store which has been opened for nearly 20 years couldn't organise a single sales event properly. You have all the technology in the world to put this together. Send out invites to your clients, invite with selected time slots and limited numbers. What we was met with was the most awful experience I had to endure. After taking over 2 hours to travel to the venue, was told when arrived that the queue has been closed due to an overwhelming turnout. Was told this was notified via Instagram...when I did my initial booking through Eventbrite. I managed to find a member of the DSM team who let me join the queue. Waited for over 2 hours, in the heat and then when arrived to the venue saw a line of over a thousand people which was a further 4 hours. Only 4 security inside, people jumping the queue, awful toilets (porter loos) and when I used the toilet security said I cannot go back into the queue. I told him I went to use the toilet. Even though it was put there for us to use. To think we cannot use the toilet, no drinks which I ended up leaving the venue after waiting 6 hours. Spoke to some of the shoppers who left with only 1 item as they said there was resellers filling over 10 large wash bags with the same items, literally buying all the stock. If this was an event for resellers you should of said this. Poor management and putting thousands of people at risk. With minimum security it could of turned into carnage. You should be ashamed of yourselves, as a regular client of DSM I didn't think in my life I would be treated like cattle. Having to defend myself from people pushing and shoving. All the DSM staff were nice but the organisation was terrible. I think this was just a publicity event to promote the store to make it look popular and hyped for social platforms, but instead you have cheapend the brand. No care for our safety. Appalling it should of been shut down for health and...

I’ve been a loyal customer of DSM since 2017, and I’ve always enjoyed the experience until today. On June 12th, I had a deeply unpleasant interaction with a European female staff member on the top floor, in the womenswear area near Uma Wang. She had medium-length hair with blunt bangs, wore a black skirt suit and Mary Jane shoes.

Her attitude was shockingly rude. She initially asked me to step out of the fitting room to try on shoes and said she would get me a chair. But instead, she disappeared into the stockroom, leaving me awkwardly standing alone in the store with one shoe off. Only after she returned with the shoes did she let me sit down.

Later, when I mentioned the shoes felt slightly big, she responded, “Let me check if we have a smaller size.” Both of my friends heard this clearly. However, she never came back. She started serving another customer and even helped them at checkout, leaving me waiting on the chair for more than 10 minutes. When I finally approached her, she simply said, “We don’t have it,” in a tone that implied she had already told me so, which she never did.

There was no apology, no thank you, no basic courtesy throughout. If the size wasn’t available, she should have had the decency to inform me instead of ignoring me completely and treating me like a nuisance.

Over the years, I’ve encountered many polite and professional staff members at DSM, but this woman made me feel genuinely uncomfortable for the first time. Her behavior came off as discriminatory and dismissive. I sincerely hope DSM reviews its staff training and selection processes to ensure that customers are not subjected to such...