COMME des GARÇONS' Youngest Designer Explains Dover Street Market's New Brand (EXCLUSIVE)
In COMME des GARÇONS' impenetrable universe, its Dover Street Market boutiques are the Japanese company's friendliest face. Alongside dynamic displays and ultra-hip third-party makers, all seven international DSM stores host comprehensive collections of COMME des GARÇONS designs, from COMME des GARÇONS HOMME PLUS' opaque menswear to CDG Play best-sellers.
But what about Dover Street Market's own identity? Aside from the occasional collaborative shoes or one-off wearables, it's made most tangible by the stores' shapes and selections. For a long while, that was enough. Now, there's a dedicated Dover Street Market brand to best represent one of fashion's pluckiest retailers.
This distillation of the DSM house style can, and will be, anything. A press release promises "all kinds of creative endeavors, projects, and experiments" overseen a vast cast of DSM friends, both in-house and not. First up is DSM Kei Ninomiya, a clothing line debuting for the Spring/Summer 2026 overseen by, yes, Kei Ninomiya.
Ninomiya designs noir, one of the youngest COMME des GARÇONS labels, which fits because he's one of the company's youngest talents (noir began in 2018, after then-33-year-old Ninomiya had been working as a CDG pattern-maker for over a half-decade).
Whereas noir presents evocative womenswear as expressive as it is exquisite, DSM Kei Ninomiya is a pretty approachable line of mostly blacked-out sporty gear with football flavor. The collection is rich with coaches jacket-style shirts, jacquard-knit footie scarves, mesh-paneled "DSM FC" tops, and T-shirts printed with the names of cities that host Dover Street Market stores (and the year of their opening). What's the deal?
"As I design, my preferences naturally come through," the taciturn designer tells Highsnobiety, when asked if the collection reflects his personal taste. Take that to mean that Ninomiya is a football fan. Given that noir is a women's line, Did Ninomiya have to shift his approach to create a coed capsule? "I did consider sizing, but I haven't focused much on it from a genderless perspective," he says. "While noir's collection is technically a women's brand, it is worn by a diverse range of people."
Better to not pigeonhole, then.
That's a good rule for the DSM brand overall, as it doesn't have (and, in its release, refutes) a dedicated name.
The "DSM brand is inspired by [and clothing for] the people who gather at DSM. They mutually influence one another," Ninomiya says.
Ninomiya's DSM line could continue but it also could not. Its next offering could be sporty but it also could not. It's as fluid as the clothes themselves, with the snap-buttoned shell jackets and striped shirting wearable by anyone. The only rule is that, even though every item can obviously be worn at the wearer's discretion, you ought to at least initially take the collection in as a whole.
"When creating the collection, we envision it as a total look, but once it reaches someone's hands, it becomes different for each individual," the designer says. "They were created based on the overall concept, so I'd like if you could incorporate them within that overall image."
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