Rei Kawakubo and Adrian Joffe, who broke the mold with their Dover Street Market emporiums mixing various Comme des Garçons brands with the crème de la crème of luxury and streetwear, are disrupting retail again with a newfangled take on private-label merchandise.
During men’s fashion week in Paris, they will introduce the DSM brand, which Joffe described as “a kind of guest of each designer who we will choose to work with.”
First up is Kei Ninomiya, whose Noir collection is part of the Comme des Garçons family, and whose name will now appear alongside DSM on the label.
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“We wanted to make a DSM original brand in a new way — for business and for image,” Joffe said, always getting straight to the point, and stressing “this is definitely not a guest-designer situation, almost the opposite.”
“Ninomiya will be the first designer of the DSM brand and will remain as long as possible in that role,” he explained in an exclusive interview to reveal the project. “We plan then to add other creators under the DSM brand umbrella, each with a different idea and concept and name.”
The DSM brand will be offered to wholesale clients and be showcased from June 28 to July 1 at the Dover Street Market Paris showroom at 35-37 Rue des Francs-Bourgeois alongside spring 2026 collections by ERL, Phileo, Rassvet and Westfall.
Asked about sales projections for the first season, Joffe replied: “Our ambitions are without limit, but slowly and surely to begin with.…We’d like to make this first one popular and affordable.
“Each creator we work with will present something inherently different in some way, be it in design, category, image, size, positioning, attitude — or all six,” he said, arguing that Dover Street Market, already operating for more than 20 years in major metropolitan cities, means “a lot of things to a lot of people.”
“There will be no boundaries and classifications,” he continued, and future designers to appear on the DSM label “may be famous, established or completely unknown.”
Joffe noted the next DSM label is to appear in 2026.
For his part, Ninomiya said he was happy to take on the extracurricular project and he was eager to do something “very new” for a broader audience, given price positioning well under luxury brands, which are “often difficult for young people to attain.”
In an interview over Teams, his tall mohawk barely contained in the screen, Ninomiya described his concept for DSM as “unnamed team wear.”
He explained that he was inspired by the unique community that has formed around Dover Street Market and wished to “capture that spirit through pieces that suggest a shared visual identity, something subtle and symbolic.”
Ninomiya’s collections under his Noir moniker are often described as conceptual, boasting complex constructions and loads of technical experimentation, often yielding otherworldly silhouettes.
With the DSM brand, he wishes to “engage with something more grounded: everyday garments, jersey pieces, and familiar silhouettes that people live in.”
He noted the design language would be simpler, and less radical, yet still expressing a point of view. “To create pieces with meaning,” Ninomiya said.
Dover Street Market has been present in Tokyo for 13 years, and the designer is certainly a fan. “I love the mix, and the atmosphere,” he enthused.
