20 years of Dover Street Market’s transporting in-store installations, from giant elephants to soft toys

Dover Street Market is celebrating two decades of ‘beautiful chaos’. Opening its doors in London's Mayfair in 2004, the radical concept store was founded by Comme des Garçon’s Rei Kawakubo and her husband Adrian Joffe with a simple mission: to offer a shopping experience without definitions. Departments were intentionally mixed up, windows changed constantly, and visual arts institutions and creatives were invited to bring their subversive ideas into the space. Moving to the cavernous site in Haymarket below Piccadilly in 2016 – potentially an act of retail suicide that luckily paid off – while expanding to outposts in Tokyo, New York, Los Angeles and Paris, Dover Street Market has, over the years, come to represent so much more than a store. It's the beating heart of Comme des Garçons, a touchpoint for a global community of creatives, and an incubator for emerging design talent. Never sticking to convention and always evolving, it is above all a place where people can connect with one another and feel inspired.

Incredible displays have been a part of life at Dover Street Market since the beginning. In a practice linked to its Tachiagari turnover – where the store closes for a few days each season to be reimagined anew – everyone from Ai Weiwei to Karl Lagerfeld has been given free rein over the space. In efforts that have often kept staff working through the night, these interventions have seen Stephen Jones festoon hundreds of hats from the ceiling; artist Matt Clark sail a captainless boat through the window; and a huge wooden structure with positive aphorisms penned by Kawakubo, made in celebration of DSM’s tenth anniversary, which very nearly got vice president Dickon Bowden arrested by Westminster City Council. ‘Storytelling is not just one thing,’ says Joffe, when asked why these installations are a vital part of DSM’s world. ‘Experiences are better when deeper and wider.’

Marking 20 years of radical retail, the store has planned a carnival of displays and special releases with Undercover, Cav Empt, and more, set to be unleashed in Haymarket this week. As celebrations get underway, here Wallpaper* looks back at the most memorable installations in Dover Street Market’s history.

Two decades of Dover Street Market installations

Heaven by Marc Jacobs, 2022

In 2020, Marc Jacobs channelled his inner teenage angst into the launch of the diffusion line, Heaven. Drawing upon subcultures like grunge and rave, the youthful offshoot of his namesake label was a stratospheric success from the word go, and has since caused frenzy with rebellious collaborations alongside Kiko Kostadinov, Dilara Findikoglu, and Isabella Burley’s Climax Books. In 2022, the brand found a spiritual home in the basement of Dover Street Market, the area of the store that houses fledgling brands and where DSM’s youngest customers can access a piece of its world at more affordable price points. Brought to life by John Scharbach, the installation resembled a suburban teenage bedroom on acid, complete with a wall made from hundreds of teddy bears, a plush colourful carpet and logo neon light. No parents allowed!

Simone Rocha, 2021

After several lockdowns and a year of working, for the most part, at a distance from others, the start of 2021 marked a year of strange seclusion around the world. Livestreamed from an empty Gothic Revival church in central London, Simone Rocha’s ‘Winter Roses’ A/W 2021 collection was a product of these disjointed months, fusing the formality of school pinafores with airy, dreamlike dresses and looks of a darker mood. As ever with the Irish designer, it was about being tough and tender at the same time. In celebration of ten years of her brand, and after having to show the collection digitally, the designer decided to bring the church to Dover Street Market, where a sturdy house-like structure was erected on the ground floor. Its walls were printed with the angelic figures found in the stained glass windows of St John’s Hyde Park.

Martin Parr, 2019

Few photographers have captured the quirks of British identity as prolifically, and with such accuracy, as Martin Parr. In 2019, a retrospective at the National Portrait Gallery celebrated the seminal photographer’s enduring fascination with people, bringing together some of his most recognisable works from the past five decades with never-before-seen photographs. To coincide with the landmark Only Human show, Parr designed an installation at Dover Street Market that brought the unbeautiful charm of his images into the 3D realm. Channelling the sunburnt splendour of his iconic 1980s series, The Last Resort, the photographer brought objects of English coastal nostalgia into the store, such as a plastic Mr Whippy ice cream cone, toy capsule vending machines, and a weather-beaten wooden bench.

Hello! 30th Anniversary, 2018

Over the past 20 years of Dover Street Market, frequenters of the store have learnt to expect the unexpected. The gossipy headlines of Hello! magazine might feel like a universe apart from the conceptual beauty of Comme des Garçons, but nevertheless, in 2018, DSM had its fun celebrating the British tabloid’s 30th birthday with an installation imagined by visionary set designer Andy Hillman. Emblazoned with red and white signage that read ‘Haymarket!’, a temporary newsagent stall sold items that started at the price point of 75p, including notebooks, mugs, and bottle openers.

Comme des Garçons, 2016

Rei Kawakubo’s A/W 2016 collection for Comme des Garçons was a particularly memorable display of the designer’s genius. Sending a procession of floral warriors down the runway in exaggerated silhouettes made from rose jacquards, leather bondage, and upholstered armour, it drew upon the spirit of punks and the revolutions of the 18th century. Imagined by Kawakubo herself, an austere metal structure that resembled a temple was built in the store, under which her warriors stood proudly in formation as if ready for battle.

Loewe, 2015

In 2022, Jonathan Anderson released his viral pigeon clutch – perhaps the year’s most headline-grabbing accessory – which was made even more famous by its cameo on And Just Like That in 2023. Hardcore fans of the designer will know, however, that the Irish designer’s love for bringing animals into his surreal world stretches back some years. Before the pigeon and his frog-shaped Wellipet shoes, Anderson invented the adorable – and now mainstay – Elephant crossbody bag for Loewe, which realised the curves of the gentle giant in supple calfskin leather. To mark its release, Anderson teamed up with Dover Street Market to create a life-size elephant in cheerful technicolour stripes, which towered over 10ft tall on the ground floor of Haymarket.

JW Anderson, 2016

Jonathan Anderson created his first window installation for Dover Street Market ten years ago. On the precipice of becoming one of the most important British designers of our times, that year Anderson’s men’s and women’s collections had an architectural quality to them – all strange angular cuts and dramatic silhouettes – and he described the men he imagined for S/S 2014 as ‘columns.’ With the ancient act of building on his mind, it made sense that his debut installation at DSM resembled a town, seeing sky blue walls and turrets snake together in a conceptual city for passers-by to admire in a window adjacent to DSM’s iconic white spheres.

Octopus, 2008

The gallery-like proportions of Dover Street Market have allowed space for installations of impressive scale. The team has taken advantage of this in manifold ways over the years. One particularly playful example saw a gargantuan octopus sculpture take over a corner of the shop. Created by Les Trois Garçons back in 2009, the piece was carved by hand and finished with glossy black resin and metal disks for suckers. Its tentacles wrapped around the walls, as if the mollusc was making a move to ascend the wooden spiral staircase at the heart of the store.

Tim Walker, 2008

Dover Street Market is a place where fashion’s most inventive fantasies can be experienced and touched; where you can lose yourself for a little while in a thousand different stories told by clothes. In 2008, the store celebrated an escapism of a similar kind, marking the release of Tim Walker’s now-highly collectible book, Pictures. Drawing upon the fairy tales that have shaped the legendary photographer’s ambitious tableaux images, a human-scale wooden drummer puppet sat in the window display with a dozen hand-painted drums tumbling around him, a copy of Walker’s fashion tome sat at his feet. While it may not be the biggest or brashest project the team has pulled off, the poetic display was, however, one of the store’s most beautiful – and also one of Joffe’s all-time personal favourites.