Dover Street Market Turns Museum

“Just looking”—words that strike fear in the hearts of retail sales staff the world over. But it’s what’s encouraged at Dover Street Market, where Rei Kawakubo has just installed the Trading Museum, an exhibition of archive pieces and one-offs there for the observation. (They actually are for sale if you’re feeling flush, but the emphasis is on appreciation.) A visit to the first-floor exhibition is like a mini-trip to the V&A, not least because Kawakubo borrowed eight cabinets from the museum to display the items, which range from crystal pieces from Baccarat to Stephen Jones hats, archival CDG to items from the label’s recent collaboration with Apple, the Beatles’ license holder. The show is actually a temporary traveling exhibition, opening this week and closing next. Its first stop was in DSM Tokyo, where, apparently, the “just looking” message failed to take hold—almost every piece displayed there sold within a few hours.