CEO Talks: Adrian Joffe of Dover Street Market

When Rei Kawakubo and her husband Adrian Joffe opened Dover Street Market in London 15 years ago — mingling all Comme des Garçons lines with luxury and streetwear in a quirky emporium replete with porta-potty fitting cabins — they established something new in retail, what they dubbed “beautiful chaos.” Customers didn’t immediately see the beauty in it. “It was very, very difficult for four years. We suffered, we lost money, it was a very hard thing to get across,” Joffe confessed in an interview, shaking his head for emphasis. “I remember the first day people saying, ‘What is this? This is way too confusing. This is not going to work.’ We had a lot of negative comments. People could not understand it. “It was really a slow burn,” he continued. “Some good ideas are ahead of their time and they take time to get understood. Even now we have a small core of people saying, ‘Where is the suit department?'” Eventually, however, the concept took off and spread to five other cities — Tokyo, Beijing, New York, Singapore and Los Angeles. On Friday, DSM celebrated its anniversary in grand style, wrapping its London store, now located on Haymarket, in a graphic hoarding, and filling

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