How do you create a permanent home for Rei Kawakubo’s own labels alongside the designers she wanted to champion? Before Dover Street Market, we had 10 Corso Como Comme Des Garcons and the short-lived Guerrilla Stores. Today, let's take a look at some of Kawakubo's retail experiments before DSM eventually became the permanent answer.

The story begins with Carla Sozzani, who opened 10 Corso Como in Milan in 1991. Sozzani brought clothing together with photography, art, books, furniture and food under one roof, approaching retail almost like an editor putting together a magazine. She later described the idea as “slow shopping”, encouraging visitors to spend time within an environment rather than simply enter, purchase and leave.

Over in Japan, Kawakubo was already no stranger to experimenting with retail. Comme des Garcons opened its first Aoyama store in the 1970s before moving to its current Minami-Aoyama location in 1989. As CDG expanded, Aoyama became a home for its growing universe of labels and designers, while Kawakubo treated the store itself as a creative medium, transforming it through exhibitions, installations and special products, occasionally introducing work from outside the company that she personally believed in.

In 2002, these two approaches met with the opening of 10 Corso Como Comme des Garcons near the flagship. Operated as a 50/50 partnership between Sozzani and Kawakubo, the store combined their respective retail worlds. Alongside CDG and Junya Watanabe were designers like Azzedine Alaia, Maison Martin Margiela, Alexander McQueen, Dior Homme, Undercover and Hussein Chalayan. It also carried its own edits, exclusives and pieces made specifically for the project.

Two years later came a completely different experiment. In February 2004, CDG opened its first Guerrilla Store in Berlin. Rather than polished luxury interiors, the stores occupied temporary, inexpensive spaces while altering as little as possible. They were intentionally placed away from conventional shopping districts, operated with local collaborators and disappeared after roughly a year regardless of their success. The concept eventually expanded to 37 stores around the world.

Fun fact! We had our own Guerrilla Stores in Singapore too. After Adrian Joffe sent Theseus Chan an article about the Berlin store, Chan asked if he could operate one here. Comme des Garcons Guerrilla Store +65 opened at 26A Temple Street in Chinatown in May 2004. Chan and his studio WORK eventually ran four Singapore occupations, later moving through Haji Lane, Bukit Merah View and Mount Sophia.

Just four months after +65 opened, Kawakubo and Joffe launched the first Dover Street Market at 17–18 Dover Street in London in September 2004. Unlike the Guerrilla Stores, DSM was permanent, but rejected the organization of a conventional department store. Under Kawakubo’s idea of 'Beautiful Chaos', menswear and womenswear were mixed together, established houses sat beside emerging designers, and individual creators were given space to build their own environments. DSM was never meant to remain static. Every six months it closes for Tachiagari, or “beginning”, allowing the store to be reworked as installations change, spaces are rebuilt and new designers enter for the new season.

From 2006, this all black frilled Balenciaga skirt was designed under Nicolas Ghesquiere and modeled after the sheer skirts seen in Looks 17 and 18 of his SS06 collection. It was made exclusively for sale at 10 Corso Como Comme des Garcons.

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