The Visionaries Behind Dover Street Market Honoured at The Fashion Awards 2025

Rei Kawakubo, Adrian Joffe, and Dickon Bowden will receive the Isabella Blow Award for Fashion Creator on December 1, 2025 at the Royal Albert Hall, celebrating their revolutionary impact on fashion and retail. 

When Dover Street Market first opened in London in 2014, it felt like something the city had never seen before. More than just a store, it was a statement that rejected the polished predictability of luxury retail. Rails stood uneven, installations erupted from the floor, and art presented itself into every corner. Two decades later, that quiet revolution has reshaped the way we experience fashion. This December, Rei Kawakubo, Adrian Joffe and Dickon Bowden, the trio behind Dover Street Market’s global phenomenon, will be honoured with the Isabella Blow Award for Fashion Creator at The Fashion Awards 2025 presented by Pandora. 

The British Fashion Council’s choice feels both inevitable and overdue. Together, Kawakubo, Joffe and Bowden have constructed an ecosystem that challenges fashion’s obsession with surface and status. The award, named after the late and endlessly influential Isabella Blow, celebrates creative visionaries who redefine the landscape. A few have done so with such quiet radicalism as these three.

The founders of DSM. (credits: OSF) 

“Rei, Adrian and Dickon’s steadfast commitment to innovation, support for emerging talent and dedication to building an authentic creative community continue to influence the industry and challenge wider fashion discourse,” says Laura Weir, Chief Executive of the British Fashion Council. “We look forward to honouring them at the Fashion Awards 2025.” 

The word, ‘Community,’ feels crucial. Dover Street Market, or DSM as it’s affectionately known, has never been about commerce in the traditional sense. When Rei Kawakubo, the mind behind Comme des Garçons, envisioned it, she didn’t want a store that sold clothes; she wanted a space that felt alive. “The only way of making something new,” she once said, “is to break the rules.” DSM became her rebellion against predictability, a retail space that pulsed with creative energy and contradiction. 

Alongside Kawakubo, Adrian Joffe, CEO of Comme des Garçons International and DSM’s co-founder, translated that philosophy into a global experience. “DSM has always been about energy,” Joffe explained in an earlier interview. “It’s a place where people can feel something and not just buy something.” His role has been less about business and more about emotion, shaping how a store can act as a cultural connector rather than a mere point of sale. 

Then there’s Dickon Bowden, DSM’s Vice President, whose curatorial eye and understanding of fashion’s emotional texture have guided its global expansion. With Bowden’s influence, DSM has transformed from a London experiment into a network of spaces spanning Tokyo, New York, Los Angeles, Singapore, Beijing and Paris - each a variation on the same philosophy: imperfection as truth, collaboration as currency and surprise as the ultimate luxury.

Dover Street Market store in Beijing. (Credits: Fashion Network.) 

Dover Street Market store in Los Angeles. (Credits: British GQ.) 

Walking into any DSM location still feels like stepping into an ongoing conversation between artists, designers and ideas. One moment, a Comme des Garçons is suspended beside a display of experimental ceramics; the next, a sculptural installation divides the space into dreamlike fragments. Established houses like Gucci or Balenciaga share the same air as young designers such as Wales Bonner, ERL, BODE, Marine Serre whose work echoes the courage that DSM has always stood for. 

“Dover Street Market has always been a space where people come to be surprised,” Bowden once said. “We want to create experiences, not transactions.” That sentiment could serve as the Brand’s manifesto. DSM isn’t about selling products; it’s about crafting atmospheres that make fashion feel like an act of participation, a shared cultural ritual.

To understand why this award matters, it helps to consider what The ISabella Blow Award for Fashion Creator represents. The award is not a lifetime achievement trophy, it’s a recognition of those who bend the rules of fashion’s reality. It’s rewarded to people who remind the industry that creativity isn’t supposed to be comfortable. Past recipients include Edward Enninful, Pat McGrath, Nick Knight and IB Kamara, all figures who like the trio, have fused fashion with something far more enduring: emotion. 

Kawakubo’s work has always hovered between fashion and art, questioning what clothes can be, what they can say. Through Dover Street Market, she and Joffe gave that philosophy a home. This home isn’t in the form of a gallery or on a runway, but in the everyday act of shopping. It’s almost like a poetic irony that their most revolutionary idea was to turn retail into a creative medium. 

The recognition at the Fashion Awards also reflects something larger: a renewed appreciation for spaces that nurture process rather than product. The awards, presented by Pandora, serve as a fundraiser for the BFC Foundation, which supports education and mentoring initiatives like BFC NEWGEN and the BFC/Vogue Designer Fashion Fund. In celebrating the founders of DSM, the BFC is honouring the infrastructure of creativity and the places or people who make new voices possible. 

In a time when the fashion industry is increasingly driven by algorithms and fast consumption, Dover Street Market remains defiantly human. It’s a place that embraces friction, discomfort and curiosity. The upcoming ceremony at the Royal Albert Hall will be a moment of applause not only for the three individuals but for an entire way of thinking: that fashion, at its best, is an act of cultural resistance. 

Rei Kawakubo once said that she doesn’t create to please or provoke, she creates to make something new exist. That ethos runs through every corner of Dover Street Market and every decision Joffe and Bowden have made since. The Isabella Blow Award simply recognises what’s long been clear: DSM isn’t just a place to shop, it’s a place that reshapes how we see fashion.