Kawakubo!

Joined Hip Hoppers with
Street Cred for Opening Day of
Dover Street Market
Today was the opening day of Rei Kawakubo's New York Dover Street Market, her new 7-floor emporium in a Beaux-Arts building on the corner of Lexington and 30th Street. This area (called Kips Bay) is a fashion desert and just the place for an avant-gardist like Rei to decamp with the trendiest of the trendy in the midst of a middle-class morass of drug stores, delis and pizza joints. Let's see who follows in this colonization effort.

Rei Kawakubo is the Comme des Garçons (Like some Boys) designer.

Tear sheets from The New York Times

T magazine with Rei's sketch

for the Dover Street Market.

Upon approaching the DSM I spied a lineup of hip hoppers and said, (to myself -- because I was alone) "Oh OH. Not exactly my demographic. What am I getting myself into?" But I got on line, and when the clock struck 11, I was very nicely invited in with the well-dressed group, while the hip hoppers hopped on one foot and waited excitedly to be let in so they could buy a NIKE Supreme shirt for, what no doubt, would be an outlandish sum.

Hip hoppers waiting for the Nike Supreme.

Boring lot, if you ask me.

 Now this is more like it.

She's been featured in Advanced Style

and is wearing a Comme des Garçons coat.

 We're in.

The Jewelry Space.

Salespeople are chic, chic and chic!

 The DSM features not only the Comme des Garçons brands,

but also many other designers

 both established and new.

 This is the changing hut.

 Knit-bombed column goes from floor to ceiling.

 Greeters.

Years from now

will he wonder what

he was thinking?

 The Paris Rose Bakery is on the first floor.

 Tea Cakes.

The space is a crazy quilt of color and shape.

A Salesperson.

Hey, I know these blue blocks.

The kids build stuff with them

on the lawn of my co-op.

 An $800 scarf.

 Staircase in a Tunnel.

 Iconic tee.

 Vintage Chinese kimonos.

Un Costume.

 Columns throughout are affixed with objets.

 Wall designed to appeal to the graffiti set.

 Models for the tunnel.

A big, black coat.

 A salesperson.

Appropriately nonplussed.

 Adorable teenager with a possible prom dress.

Hard getting in and out of the limo, though.

 Not actually shoes, just shoe tops.

 Prada has raided the vintage closet for beaded dresses.

My tea cake from the Rose Bakery.

 The milliner, Stephen Jones, was there.

Richard looking at my Stephen Jones book

after I explained who Stephen Jones was.

 Loved these gloves.

Especially the tulle ones.

 Tulle dresses.

So pretty.

 A beautiful coat by Simone Rocha.

Alas, if it weren't in the stratosphere,

monetarily speaking,

it would be mine.

 A box of paper flowers.

I might go back for this.

Although an extreme extravagance at $165.

A salesperson.

So there you have it,

a tour of Rei Kawakubo's

Dover Street Market on

opening day!