It's like walking on to a film set.
While Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garçons set out to create her new Dover Street Market, packed with energy and character, the result feels as removed from the idea of a market as can be. The 'stall holders' include some of the leading lights of Paris fashion: Azzedine Alaïa, Hedi Slimane (who has designed an exclusive collection of minimal furniture for his space), Alber Elbaz, Junya Watanabe and, of course, Ms Kawakubo. Other highlights include the LA vintage-clothing dealer Decades, which dresses Hollywood starlets in their vintage Valentinos; Belgian-menswear star Raf Simons, and Judy Blame's jewellery. Everyone has been selected by Kawakubo. But don't imagine you'll be seeing them with their money belts buckled round their waists. This is just not that sort of market. It is no coincidence that parts of the interior of the six-storey building off Bond Street have been put together by theatre and film designers. 'Picasso meets Shakespeare' was Kawakubo's brief to Michael Howells. 'I've always been interested in accidentality,' she explains obliquely. 'I wanted to find a new way of looking at things.'
It is the day before the Market's official opening, and Kawakubo is overseeing the work in progress. She's dressed in a punk-rocker T-shirt, a shrunken jacket held together with safety pins and a pair of harem pants. What she omitted to tell Howells was that there was a large shed in the middle of the shop floor. 'He was surprised,' says Adrian Joffe, Kawakubo's husband, business partner and translator. But the hut - which appears to have been cobbled together from a few allotments, and which houses the till and other useful stuff - is the heart of Dover Street Market. It represents the whole spirit behind the store.
'I am interested in the aesthetic of things that have been thrown away,' says Kawakubo. 'The trend for people taking new materials and making a luxury box lacks soul.' And certainly this 'market' is nothing like the sterile flagships that line Bond Street and major shopping streets from London to Los Angeles.
When Kawakubo acquired the site, it was simply a shell. So she kept it pretty much as it was - with a few interventions from Howells and artists such as Jan de Cock, who worked on Raf Simons's space. The floors and ceilings are still roughly installed. The fitting rooms are Portakabins. All very industrial chic. For Kawakubo, it was done like this as much out of necessity as for the construction-site aesthetic. She had a small budget and a big idea.
And whatever Kawakubo does, the rest of the world follows. Her clothes are highly influential and, of course, her stores are, too. In New York, she was one of the first designers to spot the potential of the meat-packing district and opened a store there designed by Future Systems. Now the area has become the place in New York to open a flagship. Kawakubo also opened the first in a series of temporary 'guerilla' stores in Berlin, in a former bookshop. The limited budget saw it furnished with flea-market furniture with a similarly aesthetic to Dover Street.
Although it was not advertised, word gets round quickly in the fashion world. The day Dover Street Market opened in September, I bumped into John Galliano with his entourage in the lift. The day before, Franca Sozzani, editor of Italian Vogue, was having a sneak preview. And Gwyneth Paltrow was having a fitting with Alber Elbaz, whose collection of ghostly white dresses has been made exclusively for the Market.
'Whenever I travel around the world, the first place I stop is the local market,' says Kawakubo. 'I get excited by the energy.' And it is an energy she is trying to capture here at Dover Street. But while local markets are full of fruit and veg and bric-a-brac, her market has a very particular edge to it. For fashion people, it will no doubt be the first stop on a visit to London. But don't expect a bargain. And certainly don't expect to haggle. Pretend you're an extra in a movie and you'll be fine.
· Dover Street Market, 17-18 Dover Street, London W1 (020 7518 0680)
