This week, Nordstrom opened a Dover Street Market concept store at its flagship location at CF Pacific Centre in downtown Vancouver. The pop-up will remain open for six weeks. The Dover Street Market concept, located in Nordstrom’s second floor SPACE department, features all seven individual brands under the Brand Development Branch of the Dover Street Market Paris. Pieces from collections are also available now on Nordstrom.ca.
Vancouver is one of only three Nordstrom stores to see the Dover Street Market partnership, with the other two being at Nordstrom’s Manhattan flagship and at the Grove Nordstrom store in Los Angeles. Artist and furniture designer, Marc Hundley, designed the spaces.
Brands at Nordstrom’s Dover Street Market pop-up include Vaquera, Rassvet, Weinsanto, ERL, Liberal Youth Ministry, Honey Fucking Dijon, and Youths in Balaclava. Fashions for both women and men are included as well as gender-neutral styles priced from $30 up to $2,285.
Nordstrom operates two edgy unisex SPACE departments in its Canadian stores including the Vancouver location as well as Toronto’s Yorkdale Shopping Centre. Nordstrom also launched SPACE at its CF Toronto Eaton Centre store when it opened in September of 2016 but it has since shut.
The partnership is a first of its kind for Dover Street Market, which is wholly owned by Comme des Garçons and created with the goal of bringing emerging brands to market. Dover Street Market was founded in London in 2004 by Rei Kawakubo and the retailer has stores in London, New York City, Los Angeles, Tokyo, Singapore, and Beijing. A smaller store and perfume boutique are located in Paris. A full-line store was recently announced for Paris as the retailer expands its operations. Dover Street Market’s standalone stores typically span in the 15,000-square-foot to 30,000-square-foot range.
It is unclear if Dover Street Market would consider opening a standalone store in Canada. The multi-brand concept has been wildly popular since being founded 16 years ago and is considered to be one of the ‘cool’ multi-brand retail chains sometimes spoken of in the same sentence as Milan’s 10 Corso Como, Dallas’ Forty Five Ten, the former Colette in Paris, as well as Miami-based ‘The Webster’ which will open its first Canadian store on Scollard Street in Toronto’s Yorkville area this year.
