EXCLUSIVE: Rei Kawakubo Shakes Up Beauty Retailing at New Paris Outpost

PARIS — “I want to find the equivalents of Simone Rocha and Craig Green in the beauty business.” Name-checking two of London’s most singular, uncompromising fashion talents, that’s how Adrian Joffe summed up the ethos of the new Dover Street Parfums Market, where he and his wife Rei Kawakubo shunned pretty much every cliché of fragrance selling in their latest Paris project, which opens Wednesday in the Marais district. “Not a normal beauty counter,” Joffe quipped during an exclusive walk-through on Sunday with WWD, noting the absence of glass cases, advertising collateral, back walls, logos — and gifts with purchase. “It’s a forest of pillars.” Indeed, Kawakubo conceived an array of striking columnar, floor-to-ceiling display units in a range of silvery and white materials, including tiles, stucco, galvanized steel and sparkly silver lacquer. A lumpy totem covered in a patchwork of knitted squares by textile artist Magda Sayeg anchors the stairwell, beckoning shoppers downstairs to yet more pillars, which house a mix of mass, niche and super niche brands in fragrance mainly, but also skin care, hair care, makeup, grooming and wellness. “I think it’s more interesting for the customer to make architecture that requires them to think and allows them to discover things

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